Judy Lynn Havlik Gentle caregiver worked steadfastly

— As a nursing home administrator, Judy Lynn Havlik was a "perfectionist" and a "workaholic," her friends and family said.

"She would go in at 8 [a.m.] and work until 6 or 7 [p.m.] ... and still come in on the weekends, anytime she thought something needed to be done," said Janice Kendrick, Havlik's friend and former coworker. "She was a loving and caring person and very dedicated to her job. It fit her well."

Havlik, 54, died Thursday of complications from breast cancer.

On Saturday, her sister Joan Kuehn described Havlik as a bookworm and tennis player as a young girl, growing up in Hillside, and later, La Grange, Ill.

"She had the skinniest legs in the world with that tennis skirt and the biggest feet," Kuehn said, recalling their childhood.

Havlik graduated from Lyons Township High School in Illinois before attending college at Iowa State University in Ames where she met her husband, Neil.

Before graduating, the couple married and moved to the Alread area in Van Buren County, where they owned land.

In the late 1970s, the couple bought a 40-acre pecan grove in Perry, south of Morrilton, and built a home there.

While pregnant with the first of her two sons, Nathan and Danny, Havlik took a job at the Riverview Manor nursing home in Morrilton and wentback to school at the University of Central Arkansas in Conway, where she earned a bachelor's degree in family and consumer science.

She later earned a master's degree in dietetics from UCA.

Through her hard work and gentle personality, she quickly climbed the career ladder in the nursing home industry, eventually becoming the administrator of Morrilton Manor nursing home.

"She knew how to say and do positive things no matter how dire the circumstances." Kuehn said. "She was on the roof of the nursing home putting up Christmas lights on Christmas Eve, when nobody else had time to do it."

Kendrick agreed.

"She was outgoing, but in a quiet sort of way," she said. "She was soft-spoken and calming and never raised her voice."

Havlik left the nursinghome industry when Morrilton Manor was bought out and the budget was drastically cut, Kuehn said.

So, Havlik found another way to help nursing home patients - as a surveyor for the Department of Health and Human Services, where she traveled the state, inspecting nursing homes to ensure they were providing quality care.

"She knew she couldn't continue to keep the quality of care to the level she wanted [after the budget was cut]," Kuehn said. "She was compulsive about knowing what to do to keep up the quality of life for people."

Arkansas, Pages 24 on 10/07/2007

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