At an age many people retire – or expire – Judy Gethers who never worked a day in her life became a renowned gourmet chef. The granddaughter of a famed dairy restaurant owner on the Lower East Side, Ratner’s, she loved to eat well, but that was it. And then one day, sitting with her husband in Ma Maison, Wolfgang Puck’s upscale restaurant in Los Angeles, she suddenly decided she wanted to learn how to cook. She was 53. Puck put her to work as an unpaid intern in his kitchen: “You’ll be our slave,” he told her, “but after a year, you’ll be a real French cook.” Her loving husband was totally supportive, proud of the little lady from Brooklyn’s desire to be her own person. She found an identity and whose generosity and warmth that made her the confidante and loving colleague of many a leading culinary light, including Julia Child. As for her younger son, Peter Gethers, 22 at the time his mother made her life-altering move, he was at turns shocked, disbelieving, amazed, challenged and