By Sean Ruppert, Staff Writer
In the 1970s, Judith Arnold injured her back as an Army reservist during a training exercise.
The injury sustained during a helicopter jump was so severe it left her in a wheelchair for some time and on crutches for the five years following.
While such a fate might have kept another person down, Ms. Arnold, of East Windsor, never lost her desire or determination to play the sport she loves.
”I worked for years to get out of that wheelchair and play tennis,” she said. “I was diagnosed at the time as being disabled by both civilian and military doctors. (Today) I have to walk with a cane sometimes, but I have played tennis, so there.”
Fortunately for many area residents, Ms. Arnold’s determination applied not only to making her own dreams come true, but to helping those around her as well.
A tireless member of many nonprofit organizations, Ms. Arnold, a 40-year township resident, has dedicated decades to serving her community and her country.
Sunday, the Trenton charity UIH Family Partners will honor her lifetime of involvement by giving her its annual Community Trailblazer Award.
UIH is a nonprofit agency dedicated to the welfare of children.
The ceremony will he held 3 p.m. at Church of the Holy Angels, in Hamilton.
”I am very grateful, and I think it is a privilege to be able to serve the community,” Ms. Arnold said. “I feel that those of us who have enjoyed the benefits of being American citizens and have lived a reasonably secure and healthy life ought to give back. All of us should provide community service.”
Some of her work has involved her favorite sport. She has volunteered for years with the National Junior Tennis League in Trenton, which helps many underprivileged children through the sport.
”It isn’t so much about tennis as the life skills they can learn through tennis,” she said. “We use tennis as a hook and keep them on the court instead of in a court.”
She volunteers with UIH Family Partners and the National Alliance for Mental Illness and was on the board of the Hightstown-East Windsor YMCA. She has done public relations work for the National Cancer Society and is a breast cancer survivor herself. She also sits on the board of the Machestic Dragons, a Princeton-based organization that helps raise money for breast cancer research.
Ms. Arnold was a charter member of the area’s League of Women Voters and president of the Hightstown Business and Professional Women’s Organization. As a Girl Scout leader, she took her troops on trips as far away as Yellowstone National Park, and she successfully lobbied the township in the 1970s to use more humane practices in animal control. She was an East Windsor Planning Board member for 15 years.
She owns her own design and writing agency called JF Arnold Group.
On top of all of this, Ms. Arnold ran her own tennis magazine with only two other people for 10 years. The quarterly publication, which ran from 1995 to 2005, was called the Atlantic Racquet Press. It covered United States Tennis Association matches in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and parts of West Virginia.
”We ended up becoming the official USTA magazine in the area,” she said. “We had the wonderful privilege of meeting many top professionals, like Billie Jean King.”
In 2000, the magazine earned the USTA’s National Media Excellence Award.
Ms. Arnold also edited a book called, “The Games of Tennis: An African-American Journey,” by Bernard Chavis, and she serves on the board of the Black Tennis Foundation.
”It has been true that African-Americans have had a harder road in tennis,” she said. “They deserve to come more to the forefront of the sport.”
While she has accomplished a lot, Ms. Arnold said she still has more community service goals. She said she hopes that in the next five years, she will be able to lobby the state government to create a program where prison inmates train dogs that can’t be adopted so they can be adopted.
”The inmates can learn to appreciate unconditional love, and the dogs can be saved,” she said.
For tickets to the award ceremony, call 695-1492 or e-mail tscoy@uih.org.
