In four days, Judith Kennedy will begin the latest in a series of life’s challenges when she will be sworn in as the City of Newburgh mayor.

Kennedy will be succeeding long-time City Councilman and Mayor Nicholas Valentine as titular head of Newburgh.

Kennedy spoke last week by telephone as she spent the holidays with family in Idaho. One of the first questions was to ask her what her thoughts were after her election?

“My first thoughts were: How do we motivate people to move in a more positive direction?” she said. “How do we pull together? How can I help? How can we collaborate to reach new goals for the city?”

Kennedy said she realizes that the city is in a deep hole and is struggling to make expenses. One way to counteract the city’s problems is to create new partnerships, both inside the city and those outside that want to help, she said.

“We need to fight divisiveness,” she said. “I really want to form partnerships with the state, the county and our neighboring towns,” she added.

“The question mark of the day is: how’s that going to work?” she asked herself. “We’ll have to pull together as a unit. After all, I’m just one vote, but I’ll do what I can to unite the city.”

Kennedy continually stressed the “we” in whatever decisions have to be made to advance the city. “This is a joint venture; it’s up to me to supply leadership, but its ‘we’ who have to make it all work.”

She said she is looking forward to helping the city over its first hurdle after voting to install a ward system during the next two years.

“The real question is: How do we equitably divide the city into four wards with the best sections?” she asked.

“I believe that there are enough good citizens that will step up to make that happen,” she said.

“I’m extremely hopeful for the future of Newburgh,” she said, adding that she will push for a Community Actions Team concept of leadership in the city. “People who feel strongly about a common goal hold the key to the city rebounding from its economic hole,” she suggested.

“There are big things that need to be accomplished during the next period of Newburgh’s history,” she predicted. “I’m pleased that I can be part of that.”

Kennedy and new City Council members Gay Lee and Cedric Brown will be sworn in at 4 p.m. Jan. 1 at the City Activity Center, 401 Washington St.

Kennedy, a native of Idaho, emerged victorious in her first attempt at elected office by handily defeating incumbent Councilwoman Christine Bello in last month’s mayoral election.

According to her biography, Kennedy is familiar with tough times. At the age of 10, she was handed the responsibility of taking care of three younger brothers while her mother worked as a fulltime store clerk and her father worked two jobs, days in a hardware store and nights on another job.

At 13, her responsibilities intensified as her father was traveling fulltime in a new job and her mother working extended hours. During those times, Kennedy’s family declared bankruptcy, leaving her determined to never face that again.

After high school graduation, Kennedy worked for one year as a dental assistant, leaving that to marry her high school sweetheart. In those days, marriage meant life as a homemaker and for Kennedy, being the mother of four sons.

For 12 years she owned a bakery that specialized in wedding cakes. Meanwhile, she was active in her church, teaching homemaking crafts in the church’s women’s organization, serving as president of the church’s youth group and co-chairing many of the church’s fundraising efforts. Subsequently, Kennedy went on to become president of the Working Women’s Conference, a harbinger of things to come.

With a growing family, came new challenges. She decided the best way to have a home was to build her own, acting as her own general contractor. She designed the plans and built a 4-bedroom home, then, to finish paying for it, arranged to buy a house for a dollar that was scheduled for demolition, moved it to a new location, renovated it and sold it to pay off the first home.

This whole process took about five years, she said.

As years passed, Kennedy and her husband grew apart. During one particularly down period, she decided to return to school, determined that she would study bookkeeping as her next challenge. As luck would have it, the bookkeeping class was full and an adviser talked her into enrolling in a computer programming class instead. It proved to be a life-altering decision.

After she and her husband divorced, Kennedy enrolled fulltime at Eastern Oregon State College. With four sons still at home, it required her to commute 86 miles roundtrip to class each day. At age 37, divorced and with four children, she put herself through school by working the entire time she attended college. She later transferred to Colorado State College, where she earned a bachelor of science degree, majoring in business administration with emphasis in computer information systems with a minor in computer science.

Following graduation, Kennedy found work designing and implementing a computer system for the Fort Collins, Colo., city bus system. From there she caught on as a network administrator for Colorado Memory Systems, later transitioning to support systems manager with Hewlett Packard when it acquired Colorado Memory Systems in 1993.

Throughout her years with HP, Kennedy advanced through the ranks. When HP bought Colorado Memory Systems, she became campus technical support manager and two years later was chosen to be part of a standard technical support model for 14 major HP sites across the country.

During the period that followed, Kennedy served as a HP consultant for some of the firm’s most prominent clients – AT&T, Baylor University and Albertson’s Supermarkets, which was then the nation’s second largest supermarket chain.

After three years of exhausting travel, she was promoted to worldwide operations manager at HP. Then Albertson’s came calling, offering the job of implementing the system she had designed for them years earlier.

When Albertson’s was sold a few years later, she faced a choice of moving to Minneapolis or making another career move. She chose the latter. Part of that change meant moving to Newburgh to be close to one of her four sons, who had bought a house on Grand Street with the intention of renovating it.

When the task proved too challenging, Kennedy purchased the house from him and completed the renovations and the next part of her life began as she and other Newburgh residents joined hands to fight declining city services and rising taxes several years ago.

The decision to run for mayor ensued and on Jan. 1 the next challenge in Judith Kennedy’s life will commence.

By ALLAN GAUL
agaul@tcnewspapers.com