Judith Ann Nierenberg, 70, of Medford, MA died at her daughter's home in Carlisle surrounded by her beloved husband, daughter, and son-in-law on July 7, 2016. Judi was born in 1946 in New Rochelle, NY, the daughter of Jay and Inge Nierenberg.

Judi is survived by a large and loving family of brothers, sisters of the heart, cousins, niece, nephews, devoted friends, and former students. She also lives on in the hearts and memories of her husband, Mark Hodgson, her daughter, Jessica Nierenberg, son-in-law, Todd Johnson, grand dog, Maya, and two grandsons, Beckett and Jude Johnson, who to her were the sun, moon, and stars.

Judi graduated from University of Connecticut in 1968 and shortly after, moved to Boston to start teaching. In 1976, she returned to school to pursue advanced degrees in Anthropology and Instructional Media. While at Northeastern University, she met the love of her life, Mark Hodgson. Neither became anthropologists, but along with Judi's daughter, Jessica, they became a family.

Judi returned to work in 1979 as a librarian until she retired in 2012. She spent the first half of her career cultivating and managing a library of documentary films for Documentary Educational Resources (DER), an international ethnographic film production and distribution center that operated on a shoestring budget in a rambling building overlooking the Charles River in Watertown. She transferred that expertise to the Massachusetts Corporation for Educational Telecommunications (MCET), where she helped to design, build, and maintain a library for MCET's collection of educational materials.

After MCET, Judi returned to one of her original passions, public K-12 education. First, at the Greenhalge Elementary School in Lowell, and for 12 years in the Somerville public schools including Somerville High School, she was the Head Librarian. To Judi, a library was not just a repository of books or videos, but rather a vibrant meeting place for teachers and students of all ages to develop the skills and confidence to use any library in the world, learn to appreciate and love literature, and hone authorship--the ability to create and produce.

Over the years, Judi's love of travel and experiencing different cultures so as to teach others took her around the world from Florence Italy, where she volunteered as an angelo di fango cleaning mud from precious manuscripts at the Biblioteca Nazionale, to Japan as a Fulbright Memorial Fund Scholar, to Dar-al-Islam in Abiquiu, New Mexico, where she spent several summers as a student and a teacher.

Judi returned to school once more in 2008 to complete a degree from Tufts University in Museum Studies, and spent several summers volunteering at the USS Constitution Museum in Charlestown, MA. This past winter, she was accepted to the Peabody Essex Museum Guide Program, a dream of many years and the culmination of a career and lifetime devoted to art, education, and lifetime learning.

A service will be held Tuesday, July 12, in Story Chapel at Mt. Auburn Cemetery, 580 Mt. Auburn St., Cambridge at 2:00 P.M.

In lieu of flowers, please consider donations to any one of the organizations for which Judi volunteered or which were meaningful to her:

Somerville High School Scholarship Fund
Peabody Essex Museum
USS Constitution Museum
National Parks Museum
Temple Kol Ami
Doctors Without Borders
Greater Boston Food Bank
Winchester Public Library
Friends of Middlesex Fells Reservation