On With true cowgirl grit, Judy Campbell forged ahead
following the death of her husband, Jack Campbell, in 2003.

It was a quiet August afternoon in the little country cemetery located at the edge of Jay, Oklahoma. Appropriately, the sun had begun to sink in the Western sky as the large contingent of friends and relatives gathered at the hillside gravesite to pay their last respects to a cowboy. As the coffin was gently lowered into the ground, the man’s son stepped quietly up. Drawing out a pocketknife, he reached for the lariat that had been placed on top of the coffin and cut the hondo in half. And, with that symbolic gesture, the earthly remains of A.J. “Jack” Campbell were laid to rest. As she had throughout the hurried funeral arrangements and actual event, Jack’s widow Judy maintained an aura of outward calm and control. Early the next morning, however, that composure all but dissipated and the proverbial sky came crashing down.