Patricia Keough, a veteran reporter who founded NJ Spotlight with John Mooney and her husband, Tom Johnson in 2010, died earlier this month. She was 68. Johnson covered Passaic County government and politics for the Herald News before beginning her own consulting firm.
Tony Wilson, who spent 38 years as a news reporter for the Trentonian, died on June 16. He was 87.
Viola Foster, who served as Rep. Jim Florio’s district director when he was a South Jersey congressman, died on June 11. She was 93. Foster started as a caseworker working for Florio in the 1970s.
James “Boo” Jackson, a former public defender who served as a Superior Court Judge in Atlantic County from 1998 to 2014, died on May 30. He was 75. Jackson served as counsel to the Atlantic County Counsel before joining the bench.
Jack McMahon, who spent two decades as the Federal Public Defender for the District of New Jersey, died on June 18. He was 90. A U.S. Army veteran, McMahon was a state public defender and Rutgers Law professor, who represented the Camden 28 Group after they were charged with protesting the Vietnam War.
Betty Kopf, a former Westfield school board member, died on June 19. She was 90.
Julia Branan, a former member of the Penns Grove Board of Education and an assistant dean at Salem County Community College, died on June 15. She was 95.
Kenneth Frazee, who worked as an investigator for the New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs, the Division of Criminal Justice, the Office of the Insurance Fraud Prosecutor, and the Department of Banking and Insurance, died on June 8. He was 65.
Patricia McReynolds, a Democratic county committeewoman from Essex County and the president of the Orange League of Woman Voters in the 1980s, died on June 14. She was 79.