Jamestown centenarian Judy Braunberger remembered for family, service, community life

Judy Braunberger died peacefully May 28 at Eventide in Jamestown, just days after celebrating her 100th birthday with family and friends. For the Jamestown area, her life read like a stitched-together history of the last century: a farm girl from near Sykeston, a Jamestown High School graduate, a wartime worker, a public employee, a wife, a mother and a constant presence at church, school events and community gatherings.

Born Julia Clara Malinski on May 25, 1926, on a farm near Sykeston to Joseph Malinski and Victoria Frieze, she came of age in a part of North Dakota where family labor and community ties shaped daily life. After graduating from Jamestown High School, she and her sisters went to Chicago during World War II, where they braided wire harnesses for military aircraft. The work placed her, in a practical way, into the broader home-front effort that kept the war machine moving.

Braunberger later returned to North Dakota and worked as deputy city auditor in Valley City before marrying Jacob Braunberger in 1947. Their marriage lasted 73 years and they raised six children. Her obituary paints a picture of a mother who kept showing up, rarely missing a game, meet, concert or recital as her children and grandchildren filled gyms, auditoriums and ball fields with the sports and arts she supported so faithfully.

Her interests and service reached far beyond her own home. Braunberger attended auctions, refinished antiques, worked with wood, gardened, preserved vegetables, raised canaries and painted. She also taught Sunday school, worked local elections, helped at ArcAid Thrift Store, and supported Frontier Village and the Buffalo Museum. At First United Methodist Church in Jamestown, she stayed involved through the nursery, Rebecca Circle and church service, a steady pattern of participation that mirrored the rest of her life.

Her memorial service is set for Tuesday at 10:00 a.m. CDT at First United Methodist Church in Jamestown, with interment at 3:00 p.m. CDT at the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery in Mandan. Her husband, Jacob Braunberger, died March 3, 2020, at Jamestown Medical Center, three weeks after celebrating his own 100th birthday, a striking symmetry for a couple whose long lives reached across generations in Stutsman County, where Jamestown serves as the county seat.