Judy Borello, the owner and face of the Old Western Saloon, died on May 3. She was 78 years old.
As much of a Point Reyes Station institution as her bar, Judy was committed to keeping the Western unchanged, even as West Marin changed dramatically around it. But she was also open-minded and offbeat, embracing the town’s ‘70s eccentricities together with its ranching roots.
“She was always surrounded by colorful people,” said her daughter, Michele Hawley-Pelton, who now runs the Western. “She always loved people with ideas, sometimes the crazier the better, because she was that way, too. She was eclectic.”
While operating the saloon, Judy also helped run a sheep ranch, recorded a country album, shared a beer with the Prince of Wales and wrote an ode to the Golden Gate that remains engraved on a plaque overlooking the bridge.
For many, Judy was a rural ambassador of the cowtown that was Point Reyes Station. But she grew up in the heart of the city.
Born Judith Mae Nolan to Irish American parents in San Francisco in 1943, she was raised in the Castro when it was a predominantly working-class Irish and Italian neighborhood.
During her freshman year of high school at St. Paul’s School in Noe Valley, she discovered she could barely see the blackboard. Soon, the macular degeneration that was already obstructing her vision rendered her legally blind. Her peripheral vision was sharp, but she was never allowed to drive—an obstacle she later overcame by driving around Point Reyes Station in a golf cart decked out with an imitation Rolls Royce grill and hood ornament.
Judy married her middle school sweetheart, Kenneth Spargo, and gave birth to a son, Thor, when she was just 18. But the marriage didn’t last long, and soon she met Michael Hawley, an engineer. The two bought a house in Inverness and moved out of the city in 1965.
Though she stayed in West Marin for the rest of her life, Judy continued to have friends in San Francisco and felt ties on both sides of the Golden Gate Bridge. A poem she wrote for the bridge’s 50th anniversary in 1987 was carved on a plaque at the vista point on the Marin side 10 years later. “Born and raised in San Francisco, the pride of the Bear Flag state,” it begins. “My heart knows it’s coming home when I cross the Golden Gate.”
Michele was born in 1971, and the following year, Judy and Michael bought the Western, a historic hotel-turned restaurant that had cycled through a series of owners going back to the early 20th century. The couple soon divorced, but Judy kept the place going, eventually turning it into a community pillar—divey yet homey, frozen in time and full of personality. Ironically, Judy was never a drinker, but she imbued the bar with high spirits.
“Mom pulled it out of bankruptcy and really made it happen,” Michele said. “That doesn’t mean that she had all the business sense when she came in, but she hired people who knew what they were doing, to keep her alive and show her what she needed to do.” Some whom Judy hired, including veteran bartenders Jackie and Dick MacFarlane and Helen Bordessa, spent many years working for her and helped turn the Western into a vital community fixture.
Though a family trust took over the bar while Judy was in assisted living facilities and hospice care for the last years of her life, she stayed involved in decisions. Michele, who grew up roller skating across the Western’s floor after school, has remained committed to the same spirit of preservation, changing little about the place. She and Judy even spent extra to buy the same worn-looking rose-printed carpet that always covered the floor. “We dust, but that’s about it,” she said.
The Light reported last year on the family’s plan to sell the bar, but Michele said the plan fell through, and she now plans to keep it for the foreseeable future.
In November 2005, the Western entered the spotlight when Prince Charles and Camilla visited West Marin, inspired by an interest in sustainable farming. On a scheduled visit to the Point Reyes Farmers Market, the royals decided to make an impromptu stop at the local bar, and Judy was ready to greet them. Charles made a toast and, realizing Judy had no drink, offered to share his ale with her.
“Imagine him offering to share his beer!” she told a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, adding: “He had the most beautiful blue eyes.”
Over the years, Judy influenced local traditions. She served as secretary of the Marin County Farm Bureau and chaired the Point Reyes Business Association. As former Light publisher David Mitchell wrote in a 1986 column, Judy took Point Reyes Station’s cowtown history seriously. When photographer Art Rogers suggested a moo would be more appropriate than a noontime whistle for a new town clock, Judy made it happen. She enlisted her friend George Sumner, an artist, who contacted Lucasfilm to help find recordings of a moo and rooster crow, which Judy then played through a loudspeaker on top of her bar every day at noon and 6 p.m. for years. An electronic problem silenced the moo for several years in the 2010s, but local radio buff Richard Dillman revived it in time for Western Weekend in 2019, and it’s been keeping time ever since, albeit sometimes out of sync with daylight savings.
Though open-minded, Judy was conservative, and she stuck to her guns on local issues that meant something to her. This led to several public clashes with county officials, state regulators and the National Park Service over the sheep ranch she took over when her last husband, Bob Borello, died in a car accident in 1992. Though she didn’t come from a multigenerational Marin ranching family like Bob, she became an outspoken advocate for local agriculturalists and their property rights, putting herself at odds with local and federal preservation efforts.
Bob first bought the ranch in 1956, raising sheep and diversifying by operating a rock quarry and sewer ponds before he and Judy got married 20 years later. The ranch later faced a lawsuit by Inverness residents over the quarry’s impact on Millerton Creek, and discharge from the sewage ponds led to two separate reprimands by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.
After Bob’s death, Judy leased out much of the ranch for cattle grazing and hosted large events, including a 1993 biker rally against California’s helmet law, in the old quarry. That same year, just as Supervisor Gary Giacomini was championing federal legislation to allow the National Park Service to buy development rights on ranches outside of the Point Reyes National Seashore, Judy announced plans to develop 14 homes on her ranch, much to the chagrin of Inverness homeowners with views of unspoiled pastures across Tomales Bay. The plan went against the tide of preservation in Marin, and Judy never carried it out, but Michele saw it as a statement: Her mom was asserting her rights as a small landowner, and never agreed to give up development rights under the Williamson Act or by selling to the park service.
“It did show that we have value and the people who decided not to take the carrot should be reimbursed for that,” Michele said.
Judy also became a thorn in the side of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust as it expanded its agricultural easements on the eastern shore of Tomales Bay. In 2010, she sold her ranch to developers Virtu Investments for $4.5 million. When MALT finally bought the Borello ranch to protect it from development in 2014, the trust renamed it Millerton Creek Ranch.
Judy wrote Moo Town News, a column in the Coastal Post, for 10 years, promulgating her acerbic takes on a changing West Marin. But beyond her firebrand public persona, friends remembered her as loyal, caring and passionate about life.
Theresa Prince, a close friend who worked at the Western in the ‘70s, said she bonded with Judy over their love for their daughters, their taste for Motown music and a spiritual passion for numerology and astrology. “Judy was like my soul sister,” Theresa said. “She was really into mystical teachings, especially numerology and Tarot. She was my Taurus sister.”
Judy got joy from music until the end of her life, playing her favorite oldies extra loud as her hearing deteriorated. Nancy Gates, who first met Judy on the farm bureau board, said the last time they saw each other in person was at Nancy’s birthday party. Judy “danced the night away in her wheelchair,” she said.
Michele also emphasized her mom’s resilience, quoting her: “No matter what life deals you, accept it with positive grace, challenge it and, for God’s sake, follow your dreams!”
Judy is survived by her daughter, Michele Hawley-Pelton; her son, Thor Spargo; and her grandchildren Stephen and Jennifer Spargo.