By Bill Condy
Local journalist and Scotts Valley resident Jolande Gumz died in her sleep at home on Sept. 11 after a long battle with cancer. She was 72.
Jolande ‘Jondi’ Gumz
Jondi was an editor and reporter at the Santa Cruz Sentinel for 27 years and at the Times Publishing Group for the last five years. Her beats included education, business, local government and community news. She served for four years on the Scotts Valley Unified School District Board and was active in the high school Parent Club.
Born Sept. 2, 1953, in Madison, Wis., she was the daughter of Marcus and Norma Gumz. She grew up on the family farm near Baraboo, Wis., the eldest of eight children. She had fond memories of picking blackberries in the woods and not–so-fond memories of long hours tending the huge stills that rendered the family’s mint crop into oil for Wrigley’s chewing gum. One of her favorite childhood memories was a family road trip in a red Ford Galaxie 500 convertible when she was 12 years old, stopping at Washington, D.C. and the 1965 World’s Fair in New York.
She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Ripon College, Wisconsin, earning her B.A. in economics. She spent her college summers working at a local amusement park costumed as Little Bo Peep, ironic for one whose personal heroines were Brenda Starr, Reporter from the Sunday comic pages, and Dagne Taggert from Atlas Shrugged.
After taking journalism courses at Syracuse University in New York, she landed her first newspaper job as reporter/editor/photographer at a small-town weekly in Millerton, NY. She worked 60-hour weeks for slave wages and loved every minute of it. The wages improved over the years, but she kept up the frenetic schedule for most of her working life.
She met Bill Condy, her husband-to-be, at a journalism conference where both were accepting awards.
They were married in 1983, when both were working at the Bridgeport Post in Connecticut. In 1992, a few months after fleeing their burning house in Norwalk, Conn. in the middle of the night, they used the insurance settlement to finance a move to California. Jondi joined the Santa Cruz Sentinel as assistant city editor.
Jondi in 2006
Her first love was always reporting. She enjoyed talking to people and telling their stories. Her work won numerous national, regional and local awards and citations, including a Casey Medal for her series on changes in bilingual education. She endowed a college scholarship at her alma mater, Baraboo High School, for students pursuing writing careers.
She retired from the Sentinel in 2019 and spent a year deciding that retirement was boring. She went back to work for the Times Publishing Group, which covers community news in Aptos, Capitola, Soquel and Scotts Valley.
She was active in the Ripon College’s alumni association and served as a class representative. She recently helped organize her class’s 50 year reunion, which she refused to miss despite her worsening illness. She was an avid basketball fan, thinking nothing of driving to Sacramento for a championship game if a local high school team were involved, and a Cal Bears devotee. She loved to play bridge, a Gumz family trait.
She travelled often to various conferences and prided herself on scoring the lowest airfares available, no matter how long the layovers involved. She took wonderful photographs, especially during family camping trips to national parks.
She is survived by her husband, a son and daughter-in-law, Bryan and Dayna Condy; a stepdaughter, Shannon Porter; sisters Joy Gumz, Melanie Gumz and Diane Gates; brothers Matthew Gumz and Mark Gumz, and six grandchildren. Two sisters, Sheryl Albers and Heidi James, died before her.
A memorial service will be held on Oct. 4, at 2 p.m. at ReGeneration Church, 1500 Green Hills Rd. Scotts Valley.
Remembering Jondi
Jondi was a truth seeker, and her platform the last five years was Times Publishing Group.
She never stopped digging — whether it was a local issue all the way to international news. She didn’t fear going down the rabbit hole to get answers, always faced controversy without hesitation.
She braved through Breast Cancer on her terms, trying many alternative medicines. She was fearless and she was strong; she stayed the course with her beliefs and passions.
Together we celebrated her victories and cried with her disappointments. She fought a good fight with the disease, eight years later she was ready to head home.
She is so loved and will be so missed by TPG and so many others in our community. She will be remembered for her goodness and kindness. She was a brilliant woman and her heart was always in the game.
If you want to know who she was read the Sentinel and TPG archives, where she left her mark.
— Patrice Edwards, Owner, Publisher, Times Publishing Group, Inc.
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Whatever Jondi did, whether it be helping out her co-workers or following up on a story, she gave her heart and soul to finish the task. Never complaining and being in the office late hours with no one else in the building, she always came through with whatever she was writing and it was always just perfect.
I will never forget Jondi — her kind heart and honesty will be something that I will remember forever.
— Brooke Valentine, Sales, Times Publishing Group, Inc.
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Jondi is the third editor I’ve lost in my career. Each one has been more difficult than the last. One I lost quickly, the most recent two have both been to long illness. They all left me with the difficult task of finding words … the right ones don’t exist.
Jondi left her mark on TPG. Her unique outlook and drive to KNOW defined all she did. She didn’t have a 9-to-5 job. She had a lifestyle. It defined the topics that interested her. It defined how she did her research. It defined how she shared what she knew. And it defined how she interacted with those she worked with.
Working with Jondi was an amazing experience and I’m better for having done so … and I’m still adjusting to her absence. She was still giving us heads up about new stories the weekend before she passed. She’s one of a kind, and I’ll miss her.
— Michael Oppenheimer, Layout & Design, Times Publishing Group, Inc.
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Jondi was so much more than her title as editor. She was a true truth seeker, someone who believed deeply in the power of honesty.
But beyond her work, she was a kind and caring soul who always made those around her feel valued.
I was fortunate not only to work with her but to know her personally — she never failed to show warmth and compassion, taking the time to make both me and my daughter feel genuinely loved.
— Camisa Composti, Associate Publisher, Times Publishing Group, Inc.