Judith Mary Westerhout, multilinguist who taught dyslexic children, dies

Jacques Kelly, Baltimore Sun
·3 min read

Judith Mary Westerhout, a former Jemicy School teacher who mastered languages, died of kidney disease April 23 at the Charlestown Retirement Community. She was 97 and formerly lived in Hampden and Roland Park.

Born in Dublin, she was the daughter of Thomas Joseph Monaghan, engineer in chief of the Irish Post Office, and Winifred Cathleen Hackett, who ran the family home.

“My mother’s favorite years of her youth were spent in a house called The Beeches on Albert Road in Dún Laoghaire, a suburb of Dublin,” said her daughter Magda Westerhout Mobley.

Ms. Westerhout earned a degree in modern languages from the University College Dublin and spent one year as an interpreter in Kanturk, County Cork, for an Estonian company.

She started working for the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, which hosted the International Astronomical Union General Assembly in 1955.

Ms. Westerhout met her future husband, Gart Westerhout, a radio astronomer, at the event.

They were married Nov. 14, 1956, at St. Joseph’s Church in Glasthule, Ireland, and then moved to the Netherlands.

“My mother joked that she spoke French, German and Spanish and then married a Dutchman,” her daughter said.

During her time in Leiden she learned to drive and became proficient in Dutch. In 1962, her husband became the director of the new astronomy department at the University of Maryland, College Park, and the family settled in Adelphi in Prince George’s County.

She began working with dyslexic children in 1975, first as a substitute at High Point High School in Beltsville, and then with an organization called Tri-Services.

In 1977 Ms. Westerhout was hired at the Jemicy School in Baltimore County.

“Judith was a wonderful colleague,” said Mark Westervelt, a friend and former Jemicy faculty member. “She was a brilliant teacher. She had high expectations for her students and they worked hard to meet them. She spoke seven languages and was a masterful English teacher. She had depth and knowledge that spanned the world.”

“She said that when she joined Jemicy she found her life’s work,” said her daughter Magda. “She remained there until 1997 with a brief period teaching at West Nottingham Academy in Rising Sun.”

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She returned to college at 60 and earned a master’s degree in education at what is now Notre Dame of Maryland University.

After retirement, Ms. Westerhout joined the Renaissance Institute on the campus of Notre Dame. She taught classes about Ireland, attended other classes and served at one time as a director.

She and her husband moved to the Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville in 2008.

“My mother was an intelligent, energetic, gregarious, generous, and kind woman,” said her daughter Magda. “She often said in later years that her dream as a child was to have a close family. She was proud to have accomplished that goal.”

Ms. Westerhout was a voracious reader all her life, and there were always books all over the house and later her apartment. She stored 40 boxes of them in her apartment and liked books about Ireland, modern history and modern classics of literature.

She bred and raised cocker spaniels as a young woman and most recently had a Shih Tzu and a cat.

A funeral will be held June 6 at 11 a.m. at Our Lady of the Angels Chapel at 711 Maiden Choice Lane in Catonsville.

Survivors include two daughters, Magda Westerhout Mobley, of Baltimore, and Brigit Molony, of Catonsville; three sons, Gart Westerhout, of Komatsu, Japan, Julian Westerhout, of Bloomington, Illinois, and Anthony Westerhout, of California; and six grandchildren. Her husband, Dr. Gart Westerhout, died in 2012.