Judith Marilynn Bustany

Judith (Licata) Bustany, age 75, passed away at her home in Studio City on March 11, 2015.

She had been diagnosed in 2005 with a terminal condition known as myelodisplasia

She is survived by her husband of 42 years, Donald S. Bustany, daughter Kristen Nicole Kessler, and son Geoffrey Kessler, brother Richard Licata and sister Loretta Hart. Judith had several careers beginning at age 10 as a child actor in New York working with Broadway legend George S. Kaufman. She gave that up at 13, finished public school at the High School of Performing Arts and took her bachelor's degree at St. John's University majoring in English and education. She taught high school in New York and California. Her first marriage dissolved in 1972 and, the following year, she married Don Bustany with whom she traveled broadly over the next three decades. She quit teaching and broke into writing tv comedy sitcoms such as Who's the Boss and One Day at a Time.

She wrote a mystery novel and collaborated with the late, great Billy Barnes on a musical murder mystery, "Murder at the Villa Ragacci."

Judith was strongly committed to human rights and peace-making initiatives. She and a colleague, a nurse, travelled to Iraq twice before the US invasion of 2003 carrying all the medications and medical supplies they could cram into their suitcases. Then, on her own, she made another 15 trips – some in protest of Israel's occupation and some as a writing coach for Palestinians, Jordanians, and Lebanese who'd been commissioned to write an Arabic sitcom.

She was the vice-president of the international poets, essayists, and novelists society PEN-West and served on the board of LAANE. She served a term as president of ADA-SoCal – Americans for Democratic Action.

A visitation will be held on Friday, March 20, from 5-7 pm and a memorial service conducted on Saturday, March 21, at 12:00 noon, both at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, 6300 Forest Lawn Drive, Los Angeles.