Judy Pedrotty

Judith Carol Lamiell Pedrotty died on Friday, November 28, 2025, in Neptune, New Jersey, at the age of 82. Judy was born in Barberton, Ohio, on July 28, 1943, to Rita Patricia Jacobs Lamiell and Thomas Joseph Lamiell. She grew up with her eight siblings in Canton, where she attended St. John the Baptist Catholic Grade School and Central Catholic High School. She met Douglas Gilbert Pedrotty at Central Catholic, and they shared their first date at the Winter Formal on December 29, 1959. They were inseparable from that moment.

Judy knew she wanted to be a nurse from the time she was eight years old. She earned her RN from St. Vincent School of Nursing in Toledo, Ohio, and began working at Mercy Hospital in Canton. She and Doug were married in August of 1965 and spent their honeymoon driving across the country to Manhattan, Kansas, where Doug started graduate school and Judy continued her nursing career. The first two of their four sons - Eric and Steve - were born in Manhattan by the time Doug finished graduate school in 1967, and they moved their growing family to St. Paul, Minnesota. Sons three and four - Mike and Brian - were born in St. Paul. Judy and Doug moved the family out to 40 acres of woods in Baldwin, Wisconsin, in 1974. They raised their family and welcomed all their grandchildren there until 2015, when Judy and Doug retired to Bluffton, South Carolina.

Judy made a career of nursing at St. Joseph’s Hospital in St. Paul, Minnesota. Her first twenty years were as an Emergency Room (ER) nurse where she put both her personal and professional skills to use, treating those most in need of urgent care at their time of crisis with a combination of compassion and skill that is a hallmark of the nursing profession. Not only was she able to treat the patients themselves, but she used her “people skills” superpower to give comfort to her patients’ loved ones at the same time. After twenty years in the ER, Judy heard a new calling in the newly established Hospice Service at St. Joseph. In her first attempt to join this new service, she was told that they didn’t think an ER nurse could make the transition from providing critical life-sustaining care, to providing end-of-life care. Undeterred, she applied a second time and was accepted into what she would tell you was the most rewarding chapter of her career. Judy proved that compassion translates easily between these two starkly different environments and would work twenty more years as a hospice nurse. Having a strong faith anchored on a lifetime conversation with God gave her the tools to help the dying and their families navigate the pain and grief that can come with loss and death.

Judy’s favorite role in life was being mother to her four boys, and later Gran to eight grandchildren. Judy knew from the age of eight that she wanted a house full of boys, and she counts having four sons among her greatest blessings (Doug being her greatest). Judy routinely put her nursing skills to good use providing a combination of loving support, and no-nonsense medical care to her boys. She never missed a game, play, or performance.

She and Doug crisscrossed the country in their trusty minivan for every graduation, commissioning and winging, Baptism, First Communion and Confirmation, concert, recital and play, bee, tournament and state championship. Best. Mom. Ever.

Judy was preceded in death by her husband of 57 years, Doug Pedrotty; her granddaughter, Madison Pedrotty; parents, Thomas and Rita Lamiell; sister, Ann Lamiell Landy; sister-in-law and brother-in-law, Ruth and Roy Hambach; and brother-in-law Jeffery Reinhard. She is survived by her four sons: Eric, his wife Maria, and their children, Alex and Maggie; Steve, his wife Tina, and their son, Dominic; Mike, his wife Kate, and their children, Gil and Mary Rose; and Brian, his wife Theresa, and their children, Abigail and Matthew. She is also survived by her sisters, brother, and their spouses: Janet Orth; Jim and Leslie Lamiell; Christine Lamiell Reinhard; Rosemary and John Russell; Patricia Lamiell and Andy Weltchek; Theresa and Hugh Burnstad; and Kathleen Lamiell and Arte Kuyper. She is also survived by Doug’s sisters and their spouses, Janet and Jim Vennetti and Nancy and Ken Simone; and by 26 nieces and nephews.

A Mass of Christian Burial will be held at the Basilica of St. John the Baptist in Canton, Ohio, on Saturday, January 3, 2026, at 11:00 a.m. Interment will follow at St. Joseph’s Cemetery in Massillon, Ohio.

In lieu of flowers, memorial donations can be made to Central Catholic High School in Canton, Ohio (https://www.starkcountycatholicschools.org/DonatetoCentralCatholic.aspx).