Judith A. Osborne

Judith Ann Adams was born November 10, 1936 in Ashland, Kentucky. She was the oldest of four children born to Forna and Gertrude Adams.When she was thirteen, the family moved to Orlando, Fla where she graduated from Edgewater High School in 1954. She married Douglas Osborne, a young airman in the Air Force at the beginning of 1959 and had the first of her two children in December of that same year. Eventually the young family was stationed in Panama City, Fla where she had her second child, a son named Stephen. She used to tell how she was so shy she would hang her laundry out to dry early in the morning so she would not have to speak to anyone and then cried because she had no friends. She settled into being a full time Air Force wife and mother for the next several years. She always served in her home church, still a shy quiet woman.

Her family was transferred to Homestead Air Force Base in 1969 where she continued to do the toughest job imaginable, full time wife to Doug, and full time mother to Debbie and Stephen. ‘When Debbie entered high school, she decided her family didn’t need her and went back to work. She worked for one year in the classified department at The Miami Herald. At the same time she was taking the civil service exam to get on the list for government agencies. A year later she interviewed for a clerk typist position with the United States Customs Service and her career in government service began. At this point in her life, she broke free of her shyness and began to become the vibrant woman everyone knew. She loved the people she came into contact with, especially the young men and women who were working alongside her. She adopted every one of them as her own, giving them unconditional love and motherly advice, whether it was wanted or not. She worked her way up to a GS 13 Senior Intelligence Specialist with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a position she loved. If anyone asked her what she did, she told them “I put people in prison and I love it” She retired in 2010, after 35 years of government service. She died suddenly on August 19, 2012. She was very the definition of unconditional love and will leave a big hole in the lives of those privileged to know her.