“‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ I got that a lot from folks meeting me for the first time,” Judy Bauer, volunteer at Legacy Village at Plantation Manor, says. Apparently, her voice lacked Southern charm. She likes to point out, with a laugh, that she was born in Dayton, Ohio, on August 20, 1945, “which is south of the Mason-Dixon Line!”



These days, no one asks Judy that question. After decades in Thomasville and 17 years volunteering at Legacy Village at Plantation Manor, she has made this community her own. She knows its residents, listens to their stories and shares hers. When she arrives with a book, a game or a lesson she’s prepared, she also brings something that can’t be planned: a steady interest in the person sitting across from her.

That interest began early. Judy’s kindergarten teacher was so kind and encouraging that the children fell in love with her. Judy decided then that she wanted to teach, too. At home, she sat her younger brother and sister on the basement steps, stood at the blackboard across from them and got to work. She believes some people are born with a desire to teach or care for others. Teaching, nursing and caregiving, she says, can be callings.

Her parents gave her both the encouragement and the education to follow hers. Judy describes her mother as a “June Cleaver” homemaker whose focus was raising her three children. Games, plays, singing performances: whatever the event, her mother was there. Her father, an electrical engineer, worked hard to support the family and wanted his children to have a good education. He chose a home in Oakwood, a city near Dayton, because of its schools. After Judy’s parents passed away, her brother bought the house, and it remains in the family today.

After high school, Judy attended Bowling Green State University and pursued a Bachelor of Science in Education with a dual major in English and Spanish. Her father encouraged the science degree rather than a Bachelor of Arts in case she someday chose nursing instead of teaching. He also supported her decision, at 18, to spend a semester studying overseas. Her mother was less enthusiastic about that part.

Spain became one of Judy’s most memorable experiences. Fully immersed in Spanish for a semester, she lived with a host family in the same city as the university. The father was a policeman who patrolled a city park carrying only a nightstick. His family took in students to supplement their income, and the mother cooked and washed Judy’s clothes. At home and in her university classes, Judy spoke Spanish. She had to find her way to class on a metro system whose signs and directions were in Spanish, a big adjustment for a small-town girl. She also had the chance to visit other cities in Spain and enjoyed the experience. When the semester ended, she returned home by ship.

Long before that trip, Judy had met Doug Bauer in junior high. They went to the same high school, and their first date came about when Judy invited him to the fall Sadie Hawkins dance. Doug didn’t call afterward, so she assumed that was that. He later admitted he “didn’t really have a good time” at the dance—and they both had a laugh at his confession.

The next summer, Judy’s mother had her doing yardwork in the front yard. Judy had tried hard to get out of doing the yardwork, but her mother wouldn’t budge. So there she was, working in the front yard, when Doug came down the street in his new ’57 Chevy and asked if she wanted to go for a ride. Judy still laughs at the timing. If she’d gotten her way that day, she might have missed him altogether. That ride started the rest of their life together. Another example of God putting her where she needed to be.

Judy and Doug married in Ohio in August 1967. Doug took a job with Westinghouse in Muncie, Indiana, and Judy began teaching English at a school in Carver City. After several years, they returned to Ohio to be closer to Doug’s parents. As their only child, he felt he needed to be near them. Doug went to work for Cessna, and Judy continued teaching.

His job gave Judy one unforgettable chance to take the controls of a Cessna 150. A licensed pilot sat beside her and directed her, but Judy operated the controls herself and even landed the plane. To be clear, Judy shared, “It wasn’t on autopilot.” The company offered free flying lessons, though she and Doug both declined. Flying and landing it that day was an exciting experience enough.

The Bauers spent about 10 to 12 years in Ohio before Doug’s best friend, who had also been the best man at their wedding, asked him to come manage a hotel in Vail, Arizona. Judy and Doug sold everything, loaded their young children, Melanie and Brian, into the car and headed west. While Doug managed the hotel, Judy taught English and Spanish.

Four years later, the hotel no longer needed Doug’s services. He went ahead to Ohio to look for work while Judy stayed in Arizona with the children to finish the school year. She was teaching full time and caring for two young children on her own. Judy and Doug had each grown up with two parents at home working as a team, and she had never fully understood how single mothers managed everything until she lived a version of it herself. Looking back, Judy values that experience because it helped her better understand the challenges parents face when they’re raising children on their own.

In Ohio, Doug found work with Vernay Products, now CenTek. When the company chose to relocate to Thomasville, Georgia, the family moved again. Doug served as its human resources director for 16 years before retiring. Judy taught English at Thomas County Middle School for 20 years, retiring in 2010 after 30 years in the classroom.

She loved every day of teaching, even as she watched the job change. Early on, teachers were empowered to determine what areas the children needed more work on and focus her lessons on that. Over the years it became more about preparing for the tests, which brought more paperwork that took time from her teaching. Through it all, though, her love for the children and for teaching remained the same. Judy remembers the difference because she had always cared about the child in front of her, not just the boxes a teacher was required to check.

Thomasville became home for the family. Judy and Doug both served as deacons and elders at First Presbyterian Church of Thomasville, and both sang in the Chancel Choir. Their children grew up, and Melanie settled in Thomasville with her husband. Brian, who lives with Asperger’s, worked in the kitchen at Archbold for 18 years. When Morrison’s Dining began providing the food service there and brought in its own team, Brian also spent time working in the kitchen at Plantation Manor.

Doug’s connection to Plantation Manor began on an ordinary drive around town. Retired and a little bored, he was thinking about how to stay busy when he passed the community, now called Legacy Village at Plantation Manor. He felt he was supposed to go there. He parked, went inside and asked whether they had any openings for volunteers. They told him that absolutely they could find him something to do.

Doug began calling Bingo each week. Residents loved hearing his deep, carrying voice, and no one had trouble hearing the numbers. Judy was still teaching, but she joined him to help during the summers. Her own mother, Doug’s mother and several of their friends had experienced dementia, so the couple already understood some of the ways they could be helpful. When Judy’s father died in 2010 and she retired, she began accompanying Doug whenever he volunteered. Apart from Melanie, who was busy with her own household, the family had each found a connection to the community.

Then, in October 2018, Judy’s world changed. She had been admitted to Archbold and was receiving infusions before gallbladder surgery. Doug was at Camellia Gardens for rehabilitation after a hospital stay. On October 5, Brian called and told her, “Dad’s gone.” Judy thought he meant Doug had left Camellia Gardens and asked where he had gone. Brian told her that Doug had died. They had been married for 51 years.

Judy was in the hospital, Brian was with his father at Camellia Gardens and many of the Presbyterian church friends she would ordinarily have leaned on were out of town at a conference. She drew strength from the 23rd Psalm. Five days later, Hurricane Michael passed through Thomasville on the night of October 10. Understanding all she was facing, Judy’s doctor placed drainage tubes to help with her condition and postponed her surgery. She attended Doug’s funeral with the tubes in place.

Two weeks later, Judy had her gallbladder removed. Three weeks after that, about two months after Doug’s death, her mother died, and Judy boarded a plane to Ohio. It was a great deal of loss in a short time. Her faith helped carry her through it, as it had through other difficult parts of her life.

Before life had settled down again, Judy was back at Legacy Village, continuing the volunteering she and Doug had shared. Bingo had been his specialty; Judy found her own ways to spend time with residents and be of service. She might bring a favorite book to start a discussion, handouts that trigger thought or reflection, or gather a group for a game. Sometimes she arrives with a plan and finds that the day calls for something else. She recently completed an Ann Graham Bible study series called Jesus in Me, about the Holy Spirit and shares, “That’s what drives us. I believe that,” she says. “God puts me in these places for a purpose.”

Residents have been heard saying what a joy Judy is to have around and how much light she brings. Their company matters to her just as much. Judy has enjoyed getting to know the residents through the years, hearing their stories and sharing her own. “God gave you two ears and one mouth,” she likes to say. After years in the classroom, she knows that sometimes the most meaningful thing she can do is listen.

Judy’s days are full beyond Legacy Village, too. She sings in her church choir, rehearsing twice a week, and regularly visits a dear friend living with dementia at a community in Quitman. At home, she shares life with her son Brian, who lives independently with her. She speaks of Brian and her daughter Melanie, both of whom have special needs, as gifts from God.

No one asks Judy if she’s “from around here” anymore. Maybe a little Southern charm has crept into her voice. More than that, she’s spent years making a life here—teaching children, singing beside friends and showing up for the residents each week at Legacy Village. She belongs to this community, and it belongs to her.