This is one in an ongoing series of articles that features members of the community in an effort to paint a cumulative portrait of who we are. Individuals are chosen completely at random. Do you know someone in the community with an interesting story to tell? Tell us about it by clicking here.
Judy Joseph may be known in the community as the wife of former TV weatherman Paul Joseph, but her friends and colleagues know she has made her own indelible mark on the Milwaukee community over the last four decades.
As a teacher, volunteer and mother, Joseph has built a reputation as a leader in the Jewish community who is not afraid to challenge herself and pursue her goals.
Joseph’s interests in Judaism and public service were formed early. Growing up in Phoenix, Ariz. (her family moved there from St. Louis when she was 9), Joseph paid attention to her mother’s example of helping the disadvantaged.
“She was sort of an original social worker,” said Joseph. “There were a lot of people [in Arizona] that were very disadvantaged, and I watched [her] give them money and help them. She never said anything, she just did it.”
Joseph and her three siblings were raised at a Conservative synagogue in Phoenix. She fondly recalled the Friday night services, and the boisterous “onegs” that followed, where the cantor sang songs as the congregation ate and drank and joined in.
“The Jewish community was small, and [the onegs were] really something very special,” Joseph said.
Though it was uncommon at the time and her older sister had not done so, Joseph attended Hebrew school and celebrated becoming a bat mitzvah. The motivation, Joseph said, came from the fact that her cousin in St. Louis, with whom she was very close, attended supplementary religious school.
“We were very competitive,” said Joseph. “I told my mother, ‘If she’s going, I’m going.’”
Joseph enjoyed Hebrew school and expressed pride in being one of the few girls who had a bat mitzvah service in those days.
One of her Hebrew school classmates was Paul Joseph, with whom she carpooled when she was in fifth grade and he was in seventh. The two reunited in high school when, as a senior, Paul asked out the sophomore Judy.
“His group was the nerdy math and science guys…. They sat around [the other end of our lunch table] with their slide rulers in their pockets, and we [the female theater group] talked about all the plays we were in.”
The two stayed together through college (both graduated from the University of Utah) and were married two weeks after Judy’s graduation. She had earned her certification as an elementary education teacher after three years in college.
Finding TV work in meteorology in the early 1970s was difficult. Many stations did not employ professional weathermen. After applying to some 200 stations around the country, Paul landed at WTMJ-4 in Milwaukee, where he stayed until his retirement in early 2006.
Judy was hired by Parkway Elementary School in West Allis, but she did not do much teaching there. Instead, she spent her first winter in Wisconsin marching in the frozen picket lines outside the school due to a months-long teacher’s strike.
“That was a really rude awakening to being here,” she said.
Joseph taught fifth grade at Green Tree School in Glendale for the next two years before becoming pregnant with twins. The births became something of an event in Milwaukee.
At that time, Paul was doing the weather on the 5:00 p.m., 6:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. broadcasts on Channel 4. The twins, identical girls separated by five minutes, were born between the five and six o’clock reports. Paul’s colleague, news anchor John McCullough, reported the successful delivery on air during the 6:00 p.m. report.
“It became a big deal. People would send me notes and cards, and to this day we will be out and people will say, ‘How old are those twins? I remember when they were born!’” Joseph said.
As for being the wife of a local celebrity, Joseph said it was difficult at times, but she got used to people leering at her when she was in public.
“Sometimes people were nice, sometimes they were obnoxious … yelling out things like, ‘What’s the weather!’ Paul always handled those situations well.”
Joseph went on to have two more children, a daughter and a son, and now has four grandchildren.
Throughout the years, Joseph has continually applied herself as a teacher, organizer and leader. She spent many years as a full-time/substitute teacher at numerous schools and worked as an administrative assistant/event planner at Jewish Family Services, Inc., the Women’s Fund of Greater Milwaukee and Weight Watchers.
“She was efficient, and more importantly, compassionate,” said Judy Baruch, who, as the former director of volunteer services at JFS, was Joseph’s direct supervisor.
As the person in charge of the Jewish Chaplaincy Program, Joseph organized holiday celebrations for members of the community with special needs.
“[The chaplaincy] was really thrust upon her and she just rose to the occasion and made it special,” added Baruch.
Joseph has volunteered her time with Congregation Beth Israel’s Sisterhood, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, ORT America, Inc.-Wisconsin Chapter, Jewish Women International (formerly known as B’nai B’rith Women) and recently completed a three-year stint as the president of the Congregation Shalom Sisterhood.
One of her favorite volunteer projects, she said, was bringing her young children to the Jewish Home and Care Center once a month and allowing them to work as servers in the Home’s soda shop.
“This was Paul’s idea,” said Joseph. Since both hers and Paul’s extended families lived in the Phoenix area, their children did not have much contact with an older population.
“He said ‘we should let [our kids] get to know people that are older, that are sick … [and let them see] that there are people there that appreciate things,’” said Joseph.
Joseph continues an active schedule that includes developing and leading train tours all over the world with Paul (they have led 14 of them since 1982), teaching mahjong classes, volunteering and spending time with her grandchildren.
“I believe that whatever your interest, if you have the time and you believe in it, you can find something to do [with it],” Joseph said. “The best way to get involved is to volunteer.”
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