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We all need encouragers in our lives, someone to talk with, work with and pray with!  Judie Clarridge, who died on June 27, 2025, was an encourager of many, and an enormous influence in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle.   

Judie’s Christian faith-based life led her to serve in many aspects of the Fremont community, where she used her influence for good.  Judie was an active member of Fremont Baptist Church and of local organizations including the Fremont Neighborhood Council, the P-Patch community garden, the food bank and the Fremont Historical Society. 

Judie was born in Maryland to parents who were academically oriented.  Her father worked as a scientific aide in the Department of Agriculture in the federal government.  Judie attended college at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where she met her husband, David Clarridge.  They married in 1967 and moved to Seattle in 1969 because of David’s military service.  David went on to get an accounting degree from the University of Washington in Seattle. 

At the time of David Clarridge’s death from cancer in 2007, the couple were well-involved in community projects.  Judie was able to see through to the completion of a project David had started, the preservation of a lot on their block in Fremont, for a City-owned community garden called the Hazel Heights P-Patch. 

My involvement with Judie began when I joined the Fremont Historical Society in 2008.  While researching the Klondike Gold Rush and its impact upon Seattle, I discovered that David & Judie were the authors of a book I found at the Seattle Public Library called A Ton of Gold, published in 1972.  When I asked Judie how it was that she & her husband wrote this book, Judie replied with a smile, that the book’s origins were as an “out-of-control research project!”  At Judie’s reply, we both collapsed in giggles because this reference to out-of-control projects was an inside joke between Judie and me. 

In our Fremont historical research Judie and I sometimes started out looking for one thing and ended up finding something else.  One of the best times was our participation in the centennial celebration of Seattle’s ship canal in 2016-2017.   

We started out to research the involvement of Fremont community members in the ship canal’s beginnings in 1916-1917.  In the process, we discovered the story of a Fremont resident who went to the Klondike and whose exploits are documented in historic museums of the Klondike today.  This was one of the best of our “out of control” research projects for the Fremont Historical Society.  Our 2016-2017 explorations from Seattle to the Klondike were a fitting full-circle moment to the research Judie had done with her husband for a book in 1972. 

Judie was chairperson of the Fremont Historical Society for about ten years.  She spent hours patiently listening to me babble excitedly about my many other wandering research quests, and her encouragement kept me going.  Her influence was much treasured and will be much missed.