Judith Humphrey Shaw, 89, Formerly of Silver Spring

»Information submitted by Lowell Edmunds

Judith Humphrey Shaw, 89, died on Nov. 23 in Anne Arundel Medical Center, Annapolis. The cause of death was complications from diabetes. She had been a resident, since May 2003, of Collington Life Care Community in Mitchellville, MD.

She was born on July 19, 1926 in New Haven, CT to Eugene Hall Humphrey and Mabel Woodcock Humphrey. She attended the schools in Hamden and went on to the University of Connecticut, from which she graduated in 1948.

She worked for 37 years in the U.S. Department of Agriculture on the Index-Catalogue of Medical and Veterinary Zoology. In her job she combined her love of research, classification, and languages. Specializing in parisitology, she travelled to conferences in many parts of the world, where she also took days of vacation for bird-watching, an avid hobby. In 1991, she established the Judith Humphrey Shaw Parasitology Fund at her alma mater. It has enabled more than 200 students to do fieldwork and to travel to national and international conferences and workshops.

Her energy of mind and enthusiasm for life took many forms. She was a systematic genealogist of her family, on both her mother’s and her father’s sides. She was a competent recorder player and loved music, especially as played on the pipe organ. She became interested in historical organs in American churches, and it was as a member of the Organ Historical Society that she met James Walker Shaw. They were married in 1973 and lived in Silver Spring. He died in 2001.

At Collington she took classes in drawing and water colors and pursued this new hobby on vacations for as long as she was able to travel.

She was also a member of the Helmithological Society of Washington, the American Society of Parasitologists, and the Maryland Ornithological Society.

She is survived by 13 nieces and nephews. She took a great, affectionate interest in them and they looked to her, the last of her generation on the Humphrey side, as the center of their extended family.

The first of two memorial services will be held in the Walker Interfaith Chapel at Collington Episcopal Life Care Community, 10450 Lottsford Road, Mitchellville, MD 20721at 2:30 p.m. on Saturday, January 2, 2016. The second will be held at University United Methodist Church College Park, MD, 3621 Campus Drive, College Park, on January 24, 2016, at 1:30 p.m.

In lieu of flowers, send a donation to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation at the Philip Merrill Environmental Center, 6 Herndon Avenue, Annapolis, MD 21403 or the Maryland Ornithological Society, Cylburn Mansion, 4915 Greenspring Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21209 or The Collington Foundation, 10450 Lottsford Road, Mitchellville, MD 20721.