Services Set Saturday For Judy Johnstone

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Category: Obituaries

Created on Thursday, 13 June 2024 13:31

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Judy Zumbrunnen Johnstone

Judy Zumbrunnen Johnstone passed away at her home in Sitka on May 26 at the age of 89.  She was a long-time resident of Sitka, who will be missed by many.
Services will be held 1 p.m. Saturday, June 15 (her 90th birthday), at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. She asked that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the Sitka Homeless Coalition.
Margaret Judith Zumbrunnen was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 15, 1934, the daughter of Rudolph and Margaret Zumbrunnen.
She graduated from nursing school in Brooklyn in 1953, and in 1956 moved to Sitka to work at Mt. Edgecumbe Hospital during the TB epidemic.
She later moved to Seattle to get her bachelor of arts degree at the University of Washington. Afterward she joined the U.S. Health Corps, as the first female officer of the Corps.  She worked as a public health nurse in the U.S. Virgin Islands until she contracted malaria and had to return to Sitka to recuperate.
During her first time in Sitka she had met Warren Christianson, and when she came back from the Virgin Islands they were married. She lived on Guertin Island for about 10 years, and had two children, Thor in 1964 and Tanya in 1968.
She started a couple of businesses during this time, Sitka Bus Tours, which grew to have more than 40 employees before she sold it; and New Archangel Books, which was in the space that now houses Harry Race Pharmacy.
After her divorce from Warren in 1971 she worked in public health in a number of cities in the lower 48, including Roswell, New Mexico, Los Angeles, California, central Texas, and Cleveland Ohio.
In the early 1980s she moved back to Sitka to work at SEARHC in the Community Health Aide program. When her parents needed care in their final years, she started an adult foster care home at Thompson Apartments, which later became the SAFV facility.
When she came back to Sitka she started a long romance with Allen Johnstone, marrying him in 2000.  They were a happy couple who enjoyed building houses and traveling the world.  They both loved gardening, becoming master gardeners.  Their garden at Sprucecot, the log home they built on Peterson Avenue, was a wonder to behold.
Judy was a raconteur of the first order.  She always had a story to tell over a Manhattan, and most them were even true!  With all the accomplishments of her life and the interesting people she knew throughout her life, she was a walking history of Sitka and the health care industry. 
She would tell stories about facing malaria in the Virgin Islands and then panicking when she saw mosquito larva in the water in Sitka.  She told about driving school buses for her tour business through British Columbia in the spring on icy roads, with her son in a backpack. Or terrorizing an IRS agent who had the gall to audit her.  He apparently took one look at her books and said it was all good, but she was so mad she made him go through it all line by line to make her point.  She was full of good stories.
Judy was active in more charities and good causes than can be counted.  It would be easier to list those she was not at least peripherally involved in than those she was not.  She loved the Sitka Woman’s Club and the homeless work at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church especially, but she always had a cause she was championing.
Judy is survived by her brother, John Zumbrunnen of Chicago; her son Thor Christianson, daughter-in-law Jessica     and grandchildren Rita and Eir Christianson, of Sitka; and her daughter Tanya Dray, of San Diego.

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