The longtime local coordinator of National Family Week lived by an axiom that is perhaps even more true in the wake of her death as it was in her life.
Columbus resident Judy Lifferth, who died Monday from cancer at age 67, often shared a message with her husband Ernest about volunteer work: “You cannot erase the fingerprint from the people you touch.”
Judy Lifferth left a lot of fingerprints on Columbus area people and projects over the past three decades.
Besides coordinating local activities 29 years for National Family Week, which celebrated families that had overcome obstacles, she also led an Off Drug Support Group that met at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. She also served as a facilitator of a Better Parenting course for several years.
And for the past 12 years, she went about her volunteer work using a wheelchair for mobility due to multiple sclerosis.
How she could manage all that plus volunteering at the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints left many scratching their heads.
“Actually, we’ve all been wondering the same thing,” said Sonnie Warnick, an assistant since 1992 on National Family Week. “Even in her wheelchair, she was a force.”
When people complimented Judy Lifferth on her energy and dedication, she would respond with a smile and the same comment: “Oh, it’s not me. It’s the Lord,” Warnick said.
During one particular church food drive for the Love Chapel food pantry, Judy Lifferth decided to continue it for months.
“Oh, my word,” Warnick said. “She went on and on and on with it.”
Lifferth even met with corporate executives and encouraged them to give financially to the cause, and had grocery stores set up canisters through which shoppers could donate.
Annette Kleinhenz, a longtime friend and fellow member of the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, saw Lifferth’s impact amid selflessness.
“Even as her multiple sclerosis worsened,” Kleinhenz said, “she worked very hard to continually bring the focus and attention to the matters at hand and to reaching out and loving others and never (drawing attention) to her challenges.”
In another volunteer role as a Sunday school teacher, “I have seen firsthand the love and selflessness and dedication that she has demonstrated so powerfully,” Kleinhenz said.
In 1989, at a National Family Week gathering highlighting strong couples, Judy and Ernest Lifferth played TV anchors of fictional station KMAV (Keep Marriage Alive and Vibrant) in a skit. They had met on a blind date while students at Brigham Young University, where she studied child development and family relations.
Besides her official community volunteer duties, she sometimes would take a struggling single mom’s tough situation into her own hands, making arrangements for financial and other needed help, never asking anything in return.
And through it all, Judy Lifferth frequently demonstrated a dry wit. That included commenting for a Republic story about people who baked their own bread. She summarized her baking for her family of five children with the quip: “It takes four hours to make and one hour to disappear.”
She also said repeatedly that volunteerism can help the volunteer as much as those being helped.
“I believe,” she said, “that service is a big way a person’s self-esteem can be improved.”
Warnick was fairly amazed at her friend’s life.
“She simply wanted to do anything she could to be more Christlike,” Warnick said. “She just took it a little further than many of us.”
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Visitation for Judy Ann Lifferth will be 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday at the Barkes, Weaver and Glick Funeral Home, 1029 Washington St., Columbus. Visitation will continue from 10 to 10:45 a.m. Friday at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints meetinghouse, 4850 Goeller Boulevard, Columbus, where the funeral will begin at 11 a.m.
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