Judith Reed Schilbach

Reed met this world on October 2nd, 1946, in Glenview Illinois. Her parents, Girard and Ann Sherman Schilbach, were living with his parents, just getting started after meeting in the Marine Corps during the War. Their young family soon moved to Indiana, living in Muncie and eventually Elkhart, where she graduated from high school in 1964. Reed enjoyed her encounters with the nearby Mennonite community, including their music.

Reed spent two years at Indiana U in Bloomington, but her last semester leaned more toward blues and folk music in the local clubs, and she never went back.

She was an adventurous traveler for a young woman in those times, hitchhiking through Europe to Morrocco. She also spent three months on an agricultural kibbutz in Israel. To finance her trips, she worked off and on as a respiratory tech at Harborview Hospital in Seattle. Her later life work included working in the grocery business for almost thirty years for PCC Community Stores. In her last “retirement” job, she assisted a physically disabled girl through six years of studies in the Seattle Schools system.

In the late 60s through the early 80s, she lived in a variety of large, shared houses, where she made many lifelong friends. Music was a big part of the group’s life. She played fiddle and mandolin, the latter until 2017, when an arm injury made that difficult. But she never needed an instrument; she had voice: folk, gospel, blues, and over forty years as a leader in the Appalachian-based Shape Note music tradition. She regularly attended Seattle’s annual FolkLife Festival, and in recent years, the Tumbleweed Folk Festival in Richland WA.

In 1983, Reed settled down a bit, buying a turn-of-the-century large house in Seattle’s Ballard section, in which she lived until 2018.

Reed met her husband Bill Buchan, of Orcas Island, at a Sea Chanty workshop, in 2011. They were married on January 2, 2016, and moved to a delightful large cottage in Sequim on the North Olympic Peninsula in June 2018. She found that her injured arm did not prevent her from playing the ukulele and became an active member of Olympic Peninsula Ukulele Strummers (OPUS), until heart issues curtailed her activities earlier this year.

Reed had many interests beyond music. She had been an active member of the Seattle Metals Guild (jewelry making), and never passed by an open rock shop. She was very knowledgeable about birds and insects, especially the dragon fly.

Reed was taken from us on June 18, 2024, in Port Angeles. A Memorial will be held in Seattle after she has been environmentally processed and returned to us as Earth.

Reed is survived by brothers Mike of Kodiak AK, Jamie of Sturgis MI, and sister Idy Kiser of Ludington MI, niece Liz, nephews Andrew, Tony and Caleb.

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