Dennis, MA – Judith Anne (Maxwell) Giroux, 79, died on March 2, 2026, in Dennis, Massachusetts, with Frank, her loving husband of 59 years, and her two surviving sons, Chris and Eric, by her side following a long battle with dementia.
Judy was born on July 26, 1946, in Putnam, Connecticut, the daughter of Dr. Norman Maxwell and Eleanor (Irving) Maxwell. She grew up there and, from age ten, in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and Frank met and fell in love, definitively, at the age of fifteen following a double-date walk along Paradise Pond. She and Frank married in 1967 on the campus of UMass Amherst, from which she graduated in 1968 with a dual degree in English literature and French. She went on to earn a master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling from Springfield College and, later, a master’s degree in media literacy.
In 1974, Judy and Frank lost their first child, Frank Victor Giroux, to cancer shortly before his fourth birthday. In the aftermath of this tragedy, Judy and Frank redoubled their love and rebuilt their family, settling in as teachers in the Billerica, Massachusetts, public-school system and blessing Chris and Eric with a childhood filled with happy memories of global travel, including a five-week family road trip across America and back, and of summers on Cape Cod full of beachgoing, corn-shucking, rainy-day games of Uno and Sorry, and reading on the screen porch.
The loss of Baby Frank also launched Judy on a life of loving service. She organized the Jimmy Fund Clinic’s first support group for grieving parents of childhood-cancer victims and helped to grow that group into the Friends of the Jimmy Fund, which raised funds to provide a play-person at the clinic to entertain and distract children while receiving IV and other treatments at Boston Children’s Hospital. The group also held picnics for the kids and threw an annual holiday-season party at the hospital, replete with costumed characters and gifts for patients and their siblings. Later, Judy helped found, manage, and staff the Boston Ronald McDonald House (now The Boston House), a home-away-from-home for parents with children being treated for cancer in Boston-area hospitals.
Over a teaching career spanning over thirty years, Judy taught French and English in Northampton’s public schools, ESL to farm workers, and French, English and journalism to students in Billerica’s public schools. While teaching at Billerica Memorial High School, she organized and ran a bone-marrow drive for fellow teacher Paul Stanton, who had been diagnosed with leukemia. Several hundred students, staff, and local residents were tested for compatibility and added to the national roster of potential bone-marrow donors. Together with Frank, she was named an NBC Teacher of the Year for a project she and Frank developed involving journalism, the study of the media, the U.S. Constitution, and the judicial process.
After Judy retired in 2004, she and Frank lived in Dennis and Naples, Florida, and she freely indulged her lifelong loves: reading, spending days at the beach, visiting with friends, walking and traveling with Frank, and hosting her four adoring grandchildren-Rose, Woody, Alexis and Sophia Giroux-at “Camp Judy,” the family’s nickname for Judy’s chock-full roster of mandatory (yet fun!) activities for the kids when they visited the Cape house.
In addition to Frank, Chris, Eric, and the grandchildren, Judy is survived by her daughters-in-law Jasmine Chen and Emily (Wong) Giroux; her brother David Maxwell and his wife Jinny; and her cousins on Frank’s side, including Ralph and Valerie Bortugno and their children Matthew and Amanda and their families. She will also be remembered fondly by the Driscoll family of Northampton and Connecticut; Judge Richard and Gwen Hopper of Minnesota and Naples; Dorothy Witham of Windham, New Hampshire; the Postell family of California, Texas, and Iowa; David and Carol Scott of Dennis; Amelia Marcin of Dennis; and many other friends from her years in Billerica and on her beloved Cape Cod.
Judy’s funeral will take place at 10:00 a.m. on Monday, March 9, at CZELUSNIAK FUNERAL HOME. Burial will be at St. Mary’s Cemetery in Northampton. In lieu of flowers, please consider a donation to The Boston House (thebostonhouse.org).
Please go to the Czelusniakfuneralhome.com for online condolences and tribute book.
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