If you search online for a place called Judson, you’ll find a city in Arkansas, unincorporated communities in Indiana, Minnesota, and South Carolina, and a former small town in North Carolina that was evacuated and flooded in ‘44 to build a dam. But you won’t find Judson, North Dakota — not unless you’re looking for it.
Forgotten in the heart of Morton County, Judson is isolated among hundreds of thousands of acres of farmland sliced up by straight, flat, no-name roads. It lies west of Bismarck on County Road 84. The neighborhood only has three offshoots, all named a variation of Judson — Street, Drive, and Avenue.
At one point in time, Judson had a school serving grades 1–8. Kids from the little town of Judson and neighboring communities walked or rode horses across the plank bridge and up the gravel drive to the two-story brick schoolhouse.
Across the road, Judson Church glows white against a backdrop of greenery. Three windows, now boarded up, line the side of the building, which is faced with a steepled bell tower, brittle and broken. Just up the road, Judson Cemetery holds about 150 memorials dating back to 1908. Aside from those three landmarks, there are just a few homes and farms, one of which belonged to a retired couple, Gene and Marlene Marie — my grandparents.
My grandma, or Grandma K, as we called her, lived off of County Road 84 in a hand-built split-level home with her high school sweetheart, Gene. They were two of the few remaining residents of Judson in the early 2000s — She always joked Judson had more animals than people. Once, while I talked with her on the phone, she started yelling, “Shoo! Shoo!” — goats that had escaped from her neighbor’s farm were helping themselves to her apple trees.
I only visited her and Gene a handful of times in Judson, but those visits live large in my memory. One high-school summer, my mom and I took a trip out there, and we spent our days cooking meals from homegrown vegetables we’d collected from their two-acre “garden.”
We took walks down County Road 84 to visit the school — which had been purchased and turned into a homestead — the church, and the cemetery, where many of Gene’s relatives had been laid to rest. I’d jog down the county road until the pavement turned to gravel and the small community of Judson melted into a speck on the horizon. A mile or so from my grandparents’ house, sitting out in a grain field, crumbled the ruins of Gene’s childhood home — a one- or two-room dirt-floor shack. He’d never gotten far from where he was born.
Marlene Marie, on the other hand, had only recently returned to her stomping grounds. She grew up about 25 miles north of Judson in the even smaller community of Hannover anchored by St. Peter’s Lutheran Church. She attended parochial school through 8th grade and then went to New Salem High School where she met Gene. During the school year, she lived in town with her aunt and uncle so she could attend school without having to travel back and forth from her parents’ Angus ranch during the treacherous winters. After graduation, Gene joined the Army, and my grandma went to college, which may have settled their decision to break up. But the tension between their families as a result of their denominational discord was almost certainly the catalyst.
My grandma moved 600 miles from North Dakota to Seward, Nebraska, to attend Concordia Teacher’s College where she earned her bachelor’s degree in education. She began her teaching career in Fargo, North Dakota, but, soon after, relocated to Kalispell, Montana, to teach at Trinity Lutheran School, and a handsome farmer named Bob Koenig made Kalispell her home. They married and had four children, including my mother.
After my grandfather passed in 1992, Grandma K purchased a condo and spent most of her time traveling to visit her kids and growing brood of grandchildren spanning from Montana to South Carolina. Her visits lasted for weeks at a time. She spent hours tickling the keys of my mom’s Wurlitzer and took a nap every afternoon in the guest room, which we called Grandma K’s room. When she wasn’t visiting, we’d keep her bedroom door closed, but I’d sneak in from time to time and curl up on the quilted bed, taking deep breaths of her baby-powder scent that had bottled up in the room.
When we weren’t together, Grandma K was my pen pal. She’d write long letters to me in cursive, telling me about her garden, her recent travels, and her musical endeavors. She was a talented musician — an organist and pianist. She played the organ for her church and encouraged me and my brother to take piano lessons — She always wrote to ask how those were going. When we were together, my brother and I would put on concerts for her, showing off what we’d learned since the last time we’d played for her.
One visit brought the entire family together — a wedding. About a decade after my grandfather’s death, Grandma K reconnected with Gene. He’d also lost his spouse, and as retirees, they reconnected. They married at Trinity Lutheran Church — the congregation connected to the school where she taught all those years ago, where all of her children had been confirmed, and where she’d spent the majority of her life — filling in as the organist, volunteering, and living in community. Her children and grandchildren were involved in the ceremony. I was the flower girl.
At three years old, I didn’t pay a lick of attention to the ceremony, but I was enraptured by my basket of flowers. The floor in front of the altar was decorated with neat color-coded piles of petals by the time they exited the chapel.
When I was young, the whole thing felt incredibly romantic — star-crossed lovers reconnecting after a lifetime apart. Their love story was and still is one of my favorites, but like many great love stories, it didn’t end happily.
The year I graduated from high school, Gene started experiencing some health issues, which made it difficult for him to travel. Grandma K flew to South Carolina to attend my graduation, and within a day of her arrival, he suffered a health emergency. She was on the next flight back to Bismarck. His decline in health coupled with mental deterioration strained their relationship and magnified his pettiness into full-blown vindictiveness, which led him to say and do some pretty nasty things to her toward the end.
In March 2018, I took my boyfriend home with me for spring break. We picked up Grandma K from the Charlotte airport on our way from Virginia to South Carolina. We had the best time that week. Along with my mom, we traveled to North Carolina where we visited the Carl Sandburg Home National Historic Site. A short hike led from the parking lot up to the antebellum home overlooking the town. We offered to hail a shuttle, but Grandma K pulled her walking stick out of the trunk and said the hike was no challenge — I barely beat her to the summit.
It’s still hard for me to believe she was already dying during that trip.
It started out as back pain. Her doctor told her to take some over-the-counter painkillers and to stop using a push mower on the lawn. She had planned to fly to Virginia for my college graduation in May 2019, but about a week before Commencement, she called me crying and said she wouldn’t be able to make it. She’d been sick for weeks and was too weak to travel. My heart cracked a little bit when she told me, but I was hopeful I’d see her later that year at my wedding. Grandma K had been my biggest supporter throughout my education.
My grandma didn’t work full-time as a teacher for long. After marrying my grandfather, she stepped away from the classroom to raise her children and support the family farm. When her kids were in school, she substitute taught. Her passion for education never left, and she supported a dozen grandchildren on their educational journeys.
Just a few days after Commencement, my mom called to let me know she was boarding a flight to Fargo. Grandma K had gone to the hospital in Bismarck, but the healthcare system was limited. She and Gene made the trip to Fargo to get some answers. Mom and her two remaining brothers traveled to North Dakota from South Carolina, Montana, and North Carolina — hoping to get there in time to see their mom while she was still herself.
She had a stroke while my mom’s plane was in the air. Within hours of her kids getting to her bedside, she passed.
Sometimes, it still doesn’t feel real that she’s gone. She went from a chest cold to a Stage IV lung cancer diagnosis in a matter of weeks. It happened too quickly for her to suffer but not slowly enough for us to prepare. Sometimes, I think she’s going to pick up the wall phone in her dining room, dial my number, and say, “Hi Emma — This is Grandma K,” in her midwestern accent, forgetting that cell phones have caller ID.
It’s rare to be loved by somebody as selfless, loving, and faithful as my grandma. She loved without expecting anything in return, and, despite having twelve to choose from, she didn’t pick a favorite grandchild. She had a special relationship with each of us and encouraged all of us to love the Lord before anyone and anything else.
When I think of Grandma K, I think of the little white-sided church in Judson — How it’s still standing after all these years, despite the sub-zero winters and harsh summers. I think of the endless, flat farmland stretching from horizon to horizon — How it doesn’t look like much but continues to grow and nourish year after year. I think of beautiful pipe organs — How they sing and sing, even after the organist’s fingers have struck the keys. And much in the same way, Marlene Marie still sings in me.
This was a beautiful story, beautifully written.