Linda DeWitt

Linda DeWitt died on her beloved farm at age 79. In her last month, after learning she had metastatic cancer, Linda remained true to character and exclaimed often that she had a wonderful and joyous life — even in hard times.

Linda excelled at loving life. She always got up to dance. She sang in the kitchen and in the car sometimes even getting the lyrics right. She loved cooperative community endeavors. She was an integral part of the stone crew with Jane for all of its twenty five years, bringing silliness and desserts plus an attention to detail that improved every project. Linda worked outdoors until the very end. She helped to finished a stone oven on scaffolding this past December. In addition to her outdoor work, she wasn’t afraid to plow through paperwork or a challenging math problem. She worked hard, loved hard, and enjoyed a job well done.

Linda was enthusiastic and wholehearted, and an eternal optimist. She liked all the right things. Every spring she planted a garden. She found deep relaxation and satisfaction in watching Gary plow a field or expertly back a hay wagon into the barn. She was as proud of running into past students who remembered her as their favorite algebra teacher as she was when someone recognized her from her work picking up garbage along the side of Route 10.

Linda was up for countless adventures. In the early years of marriage, she and Jerry snowmobiled through the night, getting home just in time for the morning milking. She learned to downhill and water ski as an adult. She marveled at earthworms the magic of making maple syrup with her grandchildren Giorgia and Annie. She walked Buford for hours through the snowy fields in her 1970s snowsuit. She cheered the annual spring release of the cows. She grew extra pumpkins for the pigs. While reviewing an early draft of this obituary, she worried that the cat people would feel left out.

She was deeply grateful for her wide web of friends: school pals, academics, farmers, relatives, neighbors, her children and grandchildren, her bridge groups, travel friends, animals, and fellow stone masons of all ages.

Linda was the kind of human we all want to be when we grow up. Linda always sought out the good in others, and stood up against injustice and bullies. She taught us how live.

Linda wished to be cremated. Her ashes will return to the farm. She requested that no service or calling hours be held, and asked instead that people might go out into the world with kindness and curiosity.

Please visit www.macarthurfh.com to share a condolence with the DeWitt family.