Judy Tihany - profile

Judy Tihany passed away on 26th August 2004. She was one of the first participants in SA4QE on its inception in 2002 and, as a fellow Hoban fan and Kraken member remarked, "Her thoughtful comments, her particular voice and her cheerfulness will be greatly missed." I was fortunate to meet "Ukulele Lola" when she visited London once (she took me to see the brilliant Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain in Hackney) and have fine memories of a fascinating evening in the presence of a warm, compassionate, creative, musical and humorous person.

- Richard Cooper


I've been looking at Judy Tihany's SA4QE entries. All of them with love and good wishes from a person I've never seen or spoken to. She was a musician and performer and I never heard her music, never saw her perform. But the love. Who can define the emotions that go out from us or come in to us. Reading all kinds of books, not all of them first-class, I find tears running down my face at various scenes. Cigarette dies shielding Bertie Cecil from the firing squad in Under Two Flags; Sidney Carton mounts the stairs to the guillotine in A Tale of Two Cities; The dwarf sees himself in a mirror in The Birthday of the Infanta. Love exists in words, is evoked by words, goes to and comes from persons who never existed. But it's real. And the love from and to real people is real wherever they are and however they are, alive and dead. The love from Judy is real and my love that goes to her now is real. Love is a mystery.

- Russell Hoban