By Mary Thurwachter
LANTANA — Judy Black was passionate in promoting environmental conservation and committed to creating gardens.
“She was a leader in the environmental movement,” said Ilona Balfour, who worked for a number of years with Ms. Black on the Friends of the Lantana Nature Preserve. “She was always supporting everybody. She will be sorely missed.”
After a long illness, Ms. Black, 67, of Lantana (on Hypoluxo Island), died Nov. 15 at a second home she and her husband of 29 years, Richard Schlosberg, had in Washington, Conn. She was born in New York City on Sept. 27, 1948.
Ms. Black served as president of the Hypoluxo Island Property Owners Association for four years.
She frequently coordinated with the Lantana town manager on association activities.
She also supervised the neighborhood association’s Tree Program to save the ecologically essential native tree canopy. She oversaw the plans, brought them to fruition, and with several other members and town staff, helped plant the “Four Corners” entry onto the island, as well as the “y” entry to the south part of the island.
“She turned her own small front and mostly paved back yards into verdant habitat, protective of endangered and threatened migratory birds,” her husband said.
Ms. Black coordinated the HIPOA’s annual picnic for about four years. She continued administrative and coordinating activities during a three year transition and recruited new, competent and younger leadership.
One of her recruits was Lyn Tate, current treasurer of the HIPOA.
“Not only was Judy a special person because she was so brilliant, but she gave unconditionally to the island and the town,” Tate said. “She always thought before she spoke. She was always wise in her approach.”
Along with her husband, Ms. Black was a frequent attendee at Town of Lantana council meetings and town Nature Preserve meetings where her infrequent comments were always substantive and to the heart of an issue. Her brief statements helped save the native habitat which several years ago became the Lantana Scrub Nature Preserve.
Ms. Black, Schlosberg said, “served capably and was very widely respected as the non-town (of Manalapan) representative on the La Coquille Club board and Town of Manalapan La Coquille subcommittee during a prolonged period of intense debate, defending the retention of the traditional non-town membership inclusive structure, and against challenges to the club’s existence.
She was often a rare voice promoting Hypoluxo Island-wide (joined Lantana and Manalapan) activities.
Ms. Black had a successful career in advertising. She was a vice president of marketing for Bozell throughout many corporate combinations from BJK&E to True North. Within advertising, she specialized in new media. She researched and wrote studies well received (and some seminal) in the use of cable television, then of the Internet, as they relate to advertising.
For years, she assisted, leading a subcommittee, then headed up as chairperson the American Association of Advertising Agencies New Technologies Committee.
“She was in demand by clients for her company,” her husband said. “She spoke around the world, from New Zealand to Brazil to Finland, for example, enthusiastically and with insights from her research on the potentials from technical vantage points of the then undeveloped new mediums of cable TV programming and the Internet as advertising outlets.”
Ms. Black Black was recognized by the advertising industry as one of Mediaweek's 10 All-Stars in the media field in 1995 and was on the cover of Marketing & Media Decisions magazine as one of the seers of the future of advertising. She continued to follow both the advertising industry and new media field. Later, she worked for Cablevision.
Ms. Black earned a Master of Arts degree in education from the Bank Street College School of Education and a Master of Business Administration from Columbia University School of Business. Her undergraduate degree was a B.A. in art history from Barnard College.
“She kept dear friends she met from school to business her entire life,” Schlosberg said.
Survivors, in addition to her husband, include her brother, Leon Black, his wife, Debra, and their four children.
Ms. Black was predeceased by her mother, Shirley Black Kash, who died in 2014, and her father, Eli M. Black, who died in 1975.
A tree planting ceremony in her honor is being planned for a later date.
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