Judy Whiteside
Judy was not an amateur radio operator but made a very significant contribution to ARES. She passed away August 31st at the age of 72 and was the bride of Tom Whiteside N5TW.
Tom was appointed as the Williamson County ARES Emergency Coordinator in 2004 and was responsible for establishing the WinLink email system there. The then Section Emergency Coordinator, Jerry Reimer, KK5CA, appointed Tom as a District Emergency Coordinator charged with pushing WinLink deployments across the section. As part of that, Tom envisioned a WinLink status webpage that would provide real time status for section WinLink assets and Judy swung into action to create this. Her efforts included working with the WinLink team to establish an interface to make this happen. This WinLink status page has grown to be the Texas RMS Packet / VARA FM status page: PacStat Uptime Data
Tom was appointed as the ARRL South Texas Section Emergency Coordinator in December 2009. He thought an ARRL South Texas Section database to track membership, member training, equipment capabilities, leadership structure and much more, would be a valuable tool. Once again, Judy went to work to create this tool.
This information depot as she called it went way beyond Tom’s original conception and is a very useful tool. It supports member rosters, member training / equipment data, inventory data, maps, new member registration and much more. Leadership can query the database for members with specific training credentials and equipment capabilities – something that really helps to quickly put together an emergency response team.
Judy not only created these tools, but she also actively supported them over all these years. – N5TW
Tom is not the only one that is going to really miss Judy.
I have had at least 1 monthly email with Judy for the past 10 years. She made changes to her code, that’s right, code, when report changes came from the ARRL. She is a code writer, not a Webmaster. Because of this, the South Texas Section chose to use Judys reporting tool to gather information over the league version. Her system never failed, as I am aware of. There were code changes made when someone tried to do something that she hadn’t thought about.
Thank you JKW for your service to our communities.
Thank you for being our friend…..
ARRL STX SEC
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@KE5FGA Beautifully written Mr. Walter. She has done far more than what most realize and did all selflessly. An incredible contribution, indeed. She will be remembered and missed. Her designs and code and design principals will be used in part for years to come , no doubt!
@KE5FGA I did not know Judy but the work and contribution described is amazing. A silent leader for ARES and Amateur Radio.