Keohane Funeral Home

“What did they play for you,” her sister wondered. “Benny Goodman?” In fact, it was Strauss waltzes that did the trick.

After returning to Boston she was assigned to the Office of the Commander of the Eastern Sea Frontier, where one of her duties involved typing up lists of buoys found in Boston Harbor. Seventy years later, she could still remember one item on her list: Flashing red buoy rendered permanently white by seagulls.

She began studying at Boston College’s campus in the Back Bay and continued after she was honorably discharged from the WAVES in 1947. She married Jerome Judge, the Naval Lieutenant she met when he came into her office to get the routing for his ship, in September 1950. One week later they packed three trunks and moved to Ireland to study in Dublin on the GI Bill. They traveled extensively throughout Ireland, made many friends, and were active in the university community. Eleanor joined a dramatic society organized by a fellow American student, the actor Carroll O’Connor, and played his daughter in a production of Thornton Wilder’s “The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden.”

The first of her 10 children was born in Dublin but died from cardiac complications. He is buried in the Angel’s Plot at Glasnevin Cemetery, in a grave his father helped to dig. A second son was born the following year, and she was expecting her third child when they moved to Germany for Jerome’s job with Catholic Relief Services. Two years later she packed five trunks to return to the United States for a six-year sojourn in South Bend Indiana, where Jerome taught at the University of Notre Dame. Six children and seven trunks crossed the Atlantic to spend another year in Ireland, after which Jerome was chosen to direct a group of Peace Corps volunteers in Chile. He had to fly ahead to make arrangements, so Eleanor took seven children and eight trunks on a boat that left from New York City, crossed the Panama Canal, and arrived 20 days later in Valparaiso, Chile. When they returned to the United States three years later she was expecting another daughter and the family had acquired six more trunks.

After settling in Hull, she got her nine children through the Hull Public Schools, hundreds of band performances and high school musicals, and a dozen colleges. She encouraged them to spread their wings —if she had a case of the empty nest syndrome it was a very mild one—and enjoyed visiting them in Northampton, Washington DC, Atlanta, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dublin, Japan and Hong Kong. She organized family gatherings at several jazz festivals in California where her brother, the drummer Jake Hanna, played. But she always came back to Hull. She loved the beach, the library, the commuter boat, the spa, her faith communities, her friends and neighbors, her children’s friends and neighbors, her caregivers. Her network of friends extended around the world and she stayed in touch with people throughout her life.

She worked for the Hull Public Library, for State Street South, for the Jacques Company, for the State Department of Elder Affairs and the Disaster Recovery Team. She then spent 10 years working for FEMA, traveling across the country when disasters struck, lending a hand and making new friends.