Ellen Huber Judd Pimbley, 91 years old, passed away peacefully in the early hours of April 24. Her sons had held her hand in turn through a long day of decline: she was very loved. Ellen was the widow of Walter Thornton Pimbley, who passed in 2024 - after 68 years of marriage. She’s survived by two sons, three grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. Ellen had been a fireball, a young woman of exceptional energy and force. She never walked up the stairs - she RAN up them, carrying bags of groceries or a basket of laundry or even a vacuum cleaner. When her kids got out of diapers in the early sixties, she cast about for more activity. So it was volunteer work: Sunday School teacher, Presbyterian church elder, League of Women Voters (she moderated a mayoral debate in Binghamton - it came on the tube after Drazen’s Fashion Show one evening, and her family enjoyed watching her), Red Cross blood drives, and more. Ellen in her Chrysler Newport zoomed the Vestal parkway from Good Work to Good Work, peeling out from every annoying red light. Her husband later said he had to buy her new tires every year, because she left most of the rubber at Five Corners.
Ellen was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 1934. Her father, Nelson T. Judd, was an engineer for Pennsylvania Electric and Gas all through the thirties, ameliorating the Depression for his big family. Her mother was Sara Martin Judd, who went from ‘20s flapper to redoubtable matriarch. They paid for Ellen’s schooling at Penn State. And Ellen achieved there. Penn State had a sprawling Home Economics department, and Ellen took valedictorian in 1956. Then she got a fellowship to study Foods and Nutrition, married Walt, moved into grad student housing, and knocked out her master’s thesis just before delivering her first son. Then came the diapers, the move to Vestal, another son and more diapers, and then the flurry of volunteer work. That palled for her around 1968: “You know what the reward for good volunteer work is, kid?” “What, Mom?” (Ellen liked using her sons as straight men.) “More volunteer work.” So after feeding the troops at night, she’d climb into the Newport and zoom up to Cortland to get her teaching certification. Her first school was George H. Nichols (1969 - 1975), where Principal Anne Gordon - an Endicott institution - discovered she was good at getting bad boys to fly right. So she got lots of bad boys thrust upon her, and Ellen thrived. “Reading and math, reading and math! Get them up to grade level or you’ve failed them.” In 1975 she moved to the Northside school, George W. Johnson, where she taught fourth grade until she retired in 1991. “I’d rather have seven bad boys in a class than one bad girl: boys I can fix.” (They didn’t always stay fixed. Once she got a letter from Attica saying “I should have listened to you, Mrs. Pimbley.”) Ellen and Walt enjoyed at least 25 years of retirement together before Ellen began to spiral down into Alzheimer’s. She ended her days at Good Shepherd in Endwell, where the staff of the Skilled Nursing Unit kept her comfortable and cheerful - for which her family is very grateful.
Funeral services will be held Saturday, May 2nd, at 12:30 PM at the Leon Pucedo Funeral Home, Inc. 1905 Watson Blvd. Endicott, NY. The family will receive friends at the Pucedo Funeral Home on Saturday from 11 AM until time of service at 12:30 PM.