Judy Wright was born July 10, 1925, in Philadelphia, PA. Her father was a Quaker, serving as an accountant at the University of Pennsylvania until World War II. He then began work for the American Friends Service Committee, spending years with the work camp program until retirement. Her mother was an English professor at Swarthmore College. Judy became a Friend when she graduated from high school. She went on to Vassar College, where she lived in a co-op house and learned to cook many dishes that she and her many friends greatly enjoyed.
After college, she studied at the Bank Street College of Education in New York City. She taught elementary school for a year and worked for a year at the Brooklyn Museum of History, where she taught visiting classes for public school children.
Bill Matchett was a student of Judy's mother at Swarthmore, where he met Judy. They were married in 1949 and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts where Judy volunteered with Planned Parenthood while Bill studied for his PhD. Son David was born there in 1952. Judy and Bill moved to Seattle in 1954 where Kathy was born in 1954 and Stephen in 1957. Judy and Bill transferred their memberships to University Meeting.
Judy was a very active member of the University Friends Meeting. Between 1957 and 2012 she served on numerous committees: First Day School (Religious Education), Hospitality, Nominating, Oversight (now called Care and Counsel) and Scholarship. She served as the Meeting's Representative to North Pacific Yearly Meeting, and as the liaison to UFM's worship groups.
Judy coordinated an exchange program giving European high school students the chance to study in the U.S. She served with her husband on the American Friends Service Committee's regional Indian Affairs Committee. Their support for AFSC extended to the charitable gift annuities they established, which provided them with income while helping to create a stable financial footing for AFSC’s programs.
During Bill's tenure at the University of Washington, Judy and Bill took sabbatical leaves in Italy and England, where the whole family lived for a year.
After Bill retired, Judy and he moved out to their beloved home in Nellita on Hood Canal. Judy swam every day if the weather wasn't gray or rainy well into her 80's. Though the water is undeniably cool to cold, she would report that her swim was "glorious"! She loved, too, to dig clams and collect oysters and then eat them. She served on the Kitsap County Space Committee and its successor, the Kitsap County Parks and Recreation Board, for 16 years and, with Bill, was a founding member of the Hood Canal Environmental Council and the West Sound Conservation Council. She and Bill received the Hood Canal Coordinating Council’s Environmental Achievement Award for "passionate and tireless roles as advocates for Hood Canal" in 2013. They were wonderful hosts to many who spent time with them at Nellita.
Sadly, Judy and Bill’s son Stephen predeceased them in 2020. They moved in with daughter Kathy and her husband Chris in Olympia in March 2021 when it was clear they could not continue to live on their own. Judy and Bill's grandson helped them to use online technology to attend UFM when they could no longer come in person. Bill died in June 2021, two weeks after their 72nd Anniversary. Judy died peacefully April 4, 2023. A memorial meeting was held at University Meeting in Seattle and online, enabling the attendance of people from England and across the U.S. on Saturday, November 18, 2023.