Judy D. Hawks, age 79, formerly of Kearney, passed away Friday, April 11, 2025, in Elkhorn.

Funeral services will be at 10:30 a.m., Friday, April 18, 2025, at Horner Lieske McBride & Kuhl Funeral Home. Burial will follow at 2:30 p.m., at Westlawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Grand Island. Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m., Thursday, April 17th at the funeral home. Please visit www.hlmkfuneral.com to leave a tribute or message of condolence. Horner Lieske McBride & Kuhl Funeral and Cremation Services in Kearney is in charge of arrangements.

Judy Dee Hawks was born on April 2, 1946, in Grand Island, Nebraska, to Glenn and Beatrice (Belpere) Hawks. Judy graduated from Kearney High in May of 1964. After graduating high school, she started her career at Baldwin Filters on September 4, 1964, on the production line. With her dedication to the company continuing, Judy advanced herself to a dedicated quality control lab employee. After over 47 years of dedicated service, she retired from Baldwin Filters on January 3, 2012. Throughout her life, she has always been an avid sports fan. From watching family to local and collegiate teams, she enjoyed watching any sport, but she was always a dedicated Husker fan. If you needed to find Judy on a Saturday in the fall you could find her either at the stadium or in front of a TV watching her beloved Blackshirts. Besides talking about and watching sports she loved sharing memories of family fishing trips to Minnesota at the White Pine Resort. She also loved traveling with friends to Colorado to fish and enjoy the beautiful scenery. Throughout the years, Judy also loved to take care of everyone in her life. After retiring and having great memories of traveling, you could find Judy taking her beloved daily drive, listening to music to check out what was going on in town, and stopping to visit with friends. To end her drives you could often find her parked at Yanney Park enjoying the scenery and reading the newspaper. Once her niece Megan decided to attend college at UNK she would often pick Megan up and go on the daily drive. These drives with Megan often ended with a stop to get dinner or a quick detour to get a drink from a local fast-food restaurant.

Judy is preceded in death by her parents, Glenn and Beatrice; brother, Richard Sr.; and niece, Candace Hardy. She is survived by sister-in-law, Creeth of Missouri; nephews, Richard (Teresa) Hawks of Elmwood NE., and Kenny (Amy) Hawks of Omaha NE.; niece, Joni Lawal (David) of Denver, Travis (Samantha) of Missouri, Trevor (Lvonne) of Arizona; great-nieces and nephews, Samantha Hardy Hastings NE., Megan Hawks (Paul) Columbus NE., Austin Hawks (Topanga) of Elmwood NE., Courtney (Colorado), Danielle (Marcel) (Colorado), and Kaylyn Hawks Omaha NE.

Memorials to be given to the family to purchase something for Yanney Park in Judy's name.

We ask that you please wear your HUSKER gear in memory of Judy to the funeral!

Horner Lieske McBride & Kuhl Funeral and Cremation Service

2421 Avenue A

Kearney, NE 68847

1-308-237-2259