WOODVILLE – “A fierce advocate for the arts” is one way friends and family are remembering Judith Kay Haney.
The multi-faceted community leader was 81, and died last Monday, March 30. Haney, who served for many years as the Woodville municipal court judge, was also a longtime educator and creative who nurtured a wide variety of artistic expressions and abstract thinking, both as a classroom teacher and with the Arts District in downtown Woodville, which she co-founded with her husband, Sam.
A posting on the Tyler County Art League Facebook page broke the news to the general public about Haney’s passing, and stated that on May 1, which would have been her 82nd birthday, there will be an event in the Woodville Art District to celebrate her life, and that will take place from 3 p.m. until 9 p.m.
The Art District, which the Haneys established, with a corps of volunteers that make up the Tyler County Art League (TCAL), has come to include an art gallery, which showcases a variety of visual art and hosts lectures, demonstrations and classes, and a performing arts venue two doors down, the Emporium Stage, which has hosted theatrical productions and live music.
Tanner McAlpin, a playwright and theatre director, who participated in many productions at the Emporium, and now works as an assistant professor of theatre at Lamar University, said he was “heartbroken” with the news of Haney’s passing.
“Judge Haney was a fierce advocate for the arts. She and Mr. Sam gave a home to myself and so many young artists. The world lost an amazing woman, artist, friend and mother to many,” McAlpin said.
Kirsten Hardmant, who has long been active with the Art League, called Haney her “friend, encourager, supporter and adviser.” “I will miss her,” she said.
Haney, who was a fifth-generation part of Tyler County, grew up in Bridge City, and later taught school in the Houston area for 20 years. It was in Houston that she met Sam, and the two were married two weeks after meeting.
The Haneys caught national attention before they moved to Tyler County due to a property they owned being on an old cemetery. They discovered this while digging up the ground for a pool but instead turned up bodies. That story became the basis for a book and made-for-TV movie, with an added dramatization of hauntings.
In a 2011 profile piece on Haney that appeared in the Booster, it was stated that Haney “never tires of helping others,” regarding her work with Woodville ISD and her appointment, which began in 2007, as Woodville Municipal Court Judge. It was a position she held until she retired in 2023.
Haney began an arts curriculum at WISD in 1987 when she began working there. She credited her lifelong passion for the arts, and had taught art early in her teaching career, for motivation to start teaching arts classes at WISD. In a story Haney told the Booster in 2011, she offered the class on a Friday afternoon, and eight students showed up. The following Friday, 80 students came, and she claimed that some of them liked the Friday art classes even better than their free time on Saturdays.
Judith and Sam formally organized TCAL with a small group of volunteers, in 2003, and the membership grew in time to close to 500 members.
Haney received several recognitions for her efforts, including the “Citizen of the Year” award from the Tyler County Chamber of Commerce. In 2007 she was chosen by the National Park Service to design the White House Blue Room Christmas tree ornament to represent the Big Thicket region. Her ornament made it into then President George W. Bush’s Oval Office the next year, and remains, to this day, ensconced in the Smithsonian Institute.
