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“It’s been like what they tell kids coming out of college today: You’re going to have at least seven jobs in your lifetime.“My mom (the late Harriet Barnard) was always involved in things.She was a huge community volunteer.
We used to joke that we hardly could recognize her when we’d see her at home.”Judy’s election to the County Board in 1984 was in keeping with family tradition.
Her mother, too, had been a board member, as had her grandfather, Elmer Bergren, and her great-grandfather, Alfred G.
Larson.Her sister, Becky Genoways, has a similar sense of civic responsibility, which she indulges as CEO of On the Waterfront, the annual Labor Day weekend festival in downtown Rockford.Asked to describe her own career with a single noun, Judy chooses the word “facilitator” — before pausing and adding: “I don’t know.
I just do things.”But there’s another word — “hoot” — that peppers much of what Barnard says.
Her eight years with the Park District, where she helped launch a program of arts in the parks, was “a hoot.” Her time at NAT also was “a hoot.” Without saying as much, she evidently thinks that facing challenges should be fun.At one point in our conversation, she waxes nostal...
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