Judith “Judy” Oppenheimer, a veteran journalist and author whose biography of writer Shirley Jackson gained her wide acclaim, died of Parkinson disease and bone cancer May 1 at Springwell Senior Living Community in Mount Washington. She was 82.
“Judy was a person who never sought attention, was self-deprecating and had a curiosity about people and the world,” said Stephanie Shapiro, a former Baltimore Sun reporter.
“She always found a fabulous subject to write about and would dig into it,” Ms. Shapiro said. “She had an enormous intellect and a powerful intelligence.”
Judith Altman, daughter of Ralph Altman, a Department of Labor employee, and Jeanne Altman, an educator, was born in Washington.
In 1951, she moved with her family to Arlington, Virginia, and graduated in 1959 from Washington-Lee High School, now known as Washington-Liberty High School, and then earned a bachelor’s degree in 1963 in American Studies from George Washington University.
Ms. Oppenheimer began her journalism career in 1964 at The Washington Post as a “copy girl” that led to an internship.
She was promoted to reporter and in 1966 took a job at the Philadelphia Daily News were she was a movie critic and was “one of only two women reporters on the staff,” according to her biography.
She met and fell in love with Jerry Oppenheimer, a Philadelphia Daily News investigative reporter, and in 1969 the couple moved to Washington when he joined the staff of the old Evening Star.
After the birth of her two sons, Ms. Oppenheimer became a prolific freelance writer while raising her children.
She wrote for The Washington Post, Washingtonian magazine, the Village Voice, Salon, Slate, Ms. magazine and the Forward.
In the early 1980s, she became editor of the Montgomery County Advertiser in Rockville, where she “brought sharp and amusing writing to a free suburban newspaper,” according to her biography.
“I got to know Judy in the early 1980s when I took my first newspaper job working for the Montgomery County Advertiser,” recalled Ms. Shapiro. “When I got the job I was very green and the paper was located in a strip mall in Rockville.”
Ms. Shapiro recalled her first day on the job.
“It was a very long and expansive newsroom and there was Judy sitting at the far end with a cigarette in hand churning out copy,” she said. “She was older than me, but was ageless and funny, lively, effervescent and she glommed onto me.”
In 1988, Ms. Oppenheimer’s first book, “Private Demons: The Life of Shirley Jackson,” the first biography of the writer who exploded onto the literary scene with her 1948 New Yorker article, “The Lottery,” was published.
The story concerned residents of an unnamed New England village who celebrated an annual lottery ritual where a fellow townsperson was selected and stoned to death.
“When it was published shortly afterward in the New Yorker, it aroused wonder, rage, frustration and curiosity that followed Miss Jackson until her dying day,” wrote The New York Times book critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in a 1988 review of Ms. Oppenheimer’s biography.
Her second book, “Dreams of Glory: a Mother’s Season with Her Son’s High School Football Team,” published in 1991, chronicled a year of football at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School.
While never a fan of sports, she became fascinated with football, and wrote that she “purely adored the entire wild, maddened, electric, power-pumping totality of the game.”
Her son, Toby, did extract one promise from his mother, that she would not barge into post-game locker rooms seeking interviews with coaches and players.
In the early 1990s, she became a reporter and senior editor for The Baltimore Jewish Times, and in 1994, traveled to Argentina to report on a 1994 terrorist attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
When the Jewish Museum of Maryland presented an exhibit in 1995 on Henrietta Szold, the Baltimore pioneering Zionist leader’s life, Ms. Oppenheimer authored a cover story for The Jewish Times.
“Judy was a journalist’s journalist and a one-of-a-kind human being,” Alan Feiler, editor-in-chief of Jmore who worked with her, said in an obituary of her in The Jewish Times. “She didn’t mince words and called it like she saw it.”
During the 1990s, Ms. Oppenheimer contributed freelance articles to The Sun.
In 1998, she wrote about how to answer curious children’s questions about sex that erupted following President Bill Clinton’s sexual scandals. She said the topic should be addressed directly, and in her piece, she did it with some measure of humor.
“Still, I’m getting tired of hearing how awful all this is for the children. Sure, it’s uncomfortable for us, and sure, it would be pleasant to have a president whose behavior was exemplary,” she wrote.
“Even one who could stay zippered-up in the Oval Office would be nice. But I see nothing wrong with parents being forced to discuss with their children questions of ethics and lying and betrayal and the far-reaching effects of lousy behavior.
“Little girls, at least those of my generation, were often horrified when faced with the raw facts,” she wrote. “One of my friends confided that she had to be calmed down by an adult, who assured her, ‘It doesn’t really hurt, and besides, you’re kind of in a coma when it happens.'”
In the late 1990s, she entered a master’s program in journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park.
While carrying a full course load, she earned a 4.0 GPA, and taught four classes per semester, family members said.
The Washington and Baltimore resident was an avid reader, moviegoer and traveler.
“She also loved writing, cooking and laughing,” said a son, Toby Oppenheimer, of Brooklyn, New York.
Graveside services were held May 9 at Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
In addition to her son, she is survived by another son, Jesse Oppenheimer, of Los Angeles; a sister, Ida Altman, of Gainesville, Florida; and three grandchildren. Her marriage ended in divorce.
