Ireland lost a great friend in the recent death of Joe Judge, former senior associate editor of the National Geographic magazine. His forbears came from Garrywadreen, in Co Mayo, and for generations his family kept in close touch with relatives and neighbours there. He wrote beautifully in the National Geographic about Mayo and many other parts of Ireland.
Joe certainly was a man of many parts - writer, journalist, historian, painter, poet conservationist. He was equally at home in Ballyvaughan (where a tree planting ceremony remembered his many visits), Claremorris, Alaska, Borneo or Melbourne. He visited Ireland often, organising group visits and lecturing them on the history and heritage of the island. (I recall meeting him in Ballyvaughan with 32 of his family and neighbours in nine cars - a travelling open university.) He accomplished in his 68 years more than most other people dream about. Under his kindly guidance, the National Geographic sales reached 12 million copies a month.
He was a voyager, traversing Australia in the footsteps of Burke and Wills, the Atlantic in the wake of Columbus - proving that the historians had got his landing place wrong - shooting the Colorado river, journeying through the bush of Borneo. He was a founder member of the Society of St. Brendan, and he was very active in organising the trip of the Asgard to America. He also served in the American Army during the Korean War.
His father was the legendary Joe Judge, the first baseman for the Washington Senators, who won the world series on several occasions. In 1970 Joe founded the Potomac Conservation Foundation and was very proud of the beautiful forest park, with the Potomac River cascading down through it on its way to the Atlantic. He built up a strong organisation to stop the developers taking over the area. "Alas, this kind of operation would not be possible any more in America. Mammon would win now," he said.
His book Toughing It Out Plainspoken Poems of Alaska was published in Dublin by the United Arts Club and The Irish Times. It is full of humour. Season of Fire, dealing with a chapter of the American Civil War, was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. And during his final illness he finished a book on Columbus's brother, which will be published shortly.
He worked for a period as an assistant to Arthur Goldberg, US Secretary of Labour, and received meritorious and distinguished service awards. He also received an honorary doctorate from the Catholic University of America, among many other academic awards. He was a member of the renowned Cosmos Club in Washington.
Before he joined the National Geographic in 1965, he worked as a reporter in Life magazine and then as a producer/director in TV. A story is still told in media circles in America about his exit from TV. He had a very definite disagreement with the boss of the station, who wanted Joe to make a TV star of his wife. Joe's epic rejoinder, remembered to this day, was: "You want me to make a silk purse out of your sow; it can't be done.
Equally epic was his exit from the National Geographic; he and the editor and their closest collaborators insisted on telling the truth about apartheid in South Africa and informing their readers that there was more to that country than "curious wildlife and quaint aborigines". For this, they were asked to leave.
Like most things Joe attempted, his marriage was a roaring success. With his wife Phyllis, he presided over a family full of laughter, argument, poetry and opinion and great family parties. On the night he died, the neighbours set a circle of paper lanterns burning around Hatfield Court, Potomac, where he lived a shimmering, luminous tribute of love and affection and a signal to the heavens that Joe was on his way.