Juliet Tormey Schwartzman, a soprano who sang professionally under the name Judy Tormey in the golden era of radio and television, died of a respiratory condition May 6 at her Towson home. She was 97.

Born in Baltimore and raised on Guilford Avenue, she was the daughter of Francis Edward Tormey, an architect who designed Baltimore churches, and his wife, Juliet Hammond Staum, a member of an old Maryland family.

She attended Saints Philip and James School and was an Eastern High School graduate. Before starting her career as a singer, she was a devoted follower of comic pages and corresponded with the artists who created them. She designed a fashion outfit used in a 1939 “Dixie Dugan” episode and a set of clothes for “Tillie the Toiler,” used in a 1948 comic feature syndicated by the Hearst Corp.

She began singing as a child and won a scholarship to the Peabody Conservatory of Music. She studied with tenor Elwood Gary and appeared in productions of the Curtain Callers, the Alamedian Light Opera Co. and the Footlight Players.

While working at WBMD radio in the early 1950s, she was friends with Vince Bagli, who would become a well-known sportscaster on WBAL-TV.

“Vince used to drive me home at night in an old jalopy,” Ms. Tormey recalled in 2019 in The Baltimore Sun. “We were going home one night when Vince said he was thinking about giving up sports and becoming a singer. I said, ‘Vince, sing something for me,’ and he had absolutely no singing voice. I said, ‘Vince, you better stick to sports.’”

She sang on the WFBR-AM radio Club 1300 program and briefly at the Villa Capri in New York. She also sang on ships, including the RMS Mauretania, on trans-Atlantic crossings and cruises.

She joined the cast of WBAL-TV’s “Brent Gunts Show” in 1952. The live morning program was broadcast from the WBAL studio at Charles and 26th streets. A news release described her as “Judy Tormey, pert and pretty young Baltimore soprano.” Along with Mr. Gunts, she appeared with Baltimore radio hosts Jay Grayson and Jim West.

She later sang with the National Press Club Chorus and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Glee Club Chorus. During the summer of 1957, she appeared at the Ocean City Music Pier in New Jersey.

She was directed by composer Gian Carlo Minotti in his one-act radio opera “The Old Maid and the Thief.”

In 1960, she married Maurice Schwartzman, a tennis professional who became head pro at the Bare Hills Tennis Club.

After raising a family, she returned to music and founded the Performing Arts for Children’s Education, an arm of the Baltimore Music Club. Ms. Tormey and others visited numerous schools — often those in Baltimore City, where arts funding had been cut — and gave music enrichment classes. She called her troupe the Wandering Opera Players.

In a 1994 Sun article, she said, “If we have just touched 12 students over the year with our music, it’s been worth it.”

Survivors include her daughters, Margaret Hammond “Meg” Schudel, of Towson, and Kathleen Howard “Kathy” Schwartzman, of Timonium; a stepson, Charles Schwartzman, of Baltimore; and five grandchildren. Maurice Schwartzman, her husband, died in 1994.

A funeral Mass was held May 14 at Immaculate Conception Church.

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