Profile

Jude Paul Willis is the first born son to single mother, Tammy-Jane, and was followed by little brother, Billy, when he was three years old. Tammy-Jane was only young when Jude was born and her obsession with The Beatles had her naming both her sons with names from Beatles songs. The boys were born in Elk Grove in Sacramento County, California, and Tammy-Jane was a bit of a cliché case in that her boyfriend knocked her up on prom night when the condom split. But Tammy-Jane was a hard worker who adored kids and wanted to be a teacher. She couldn't have given the baby up for adoption if she tried. The boys' father, Rich (something he was very much not), did try to be a father and got a night job pumping gas to provide for Tammy-Jane and the baby. Their relationship became rocky, however, and when she fell pregnant a second time when Jude was three, he ended up tragically taking his own life because he thought he would never be a good enough father for his kids.

So, Tammy-Jane moved back in with her parents, who helped her raise the two very different boys. Billy was a little on the shy side, but wanted to grow up to be an actor. His confidence grew when he started to score roles in school plays and enjoyed classes like music and drama. He always did well in school, but because the family never had very much money, college for either of the boys was going to have to be by scholarship or not at all. Their mom did managed to get her teaching degree on a scholarship and worked teaching Kindergarten in Elk Grove. Jude, the more determined of the two boys, always said he was going to get him and Billy out of their home town because there were hardly any opportunities there. He was determined to help Billy become an actor, with Billy's dream, like many other hopeful actors, was to make it to Broadway.

Jude was never a prized student, and for the first three years of high school, he got terrible grades in all his classes, simply because he didn't really care. He was a huge troublemaker, much to the dismay of his hardworking mom, but that would all change when his beloved grandmother fell ill with Alzheimer's. Knowing full well that she was going to lose her memory and be unable to tell her grandsons the things she wanted them to know before long, when she was diagnosed, she made sure to tell Jude to please pull his head out of his ass and be someone who could make her proud. He watched her health declining rapidly, but with the help of wonderful nurses who treated her with care, respect, and dignity until her death. With the push from his grandmother, and the huge amount of respect he had for the nurses who cared for her, Jude decided to go to school to be a nurse himself... Only it was far too late to repair his GPA enough to get into school, much less get the scholarship he needed to pay for it. So, with the money he saved up the summer after graduation, he paid for a CNA course, determined to work as a nurse's assistant for a few years and see if he could land a job that would help him go forward with his dream of becoming a nurse.

In the meantime, he accepted a position at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York as a CNA, uprooting his whole life and bringing his brother along with him for the ride. He's settled into the job at the hospital, and is really grateful for the chance to be in New York where opportunities abound.