The following is a submitted obituary. The Mendocino Voice welcomes obituary submissions and publishes them free-of-charge for any North Coast resident or family. Contact us at info@mendovoice.com.
Linda Pearl Cushman, of Rohnert Park, Calif., was born in 1939 in San Jose, Calif. and died June 13, 2025, in Switzerland. She is survived by me, Karin Wandrei, her partner of 41 years, and until this November, our 17-year-old cat, Thumbelina (aka Baby). Linda lived part-time in Covelo from 1989-2000 and full-time in Willits from 2000-2012.
She grew up working on her family’s fruit farm in the Santa Clara Valley. She learned about agriculture as she helped her brother and father. She excelled in athletics and was in the Grand National Rodeo at the Cow Palace. She was strong and independent at a time when this was not the norm for women
She had two master’s degrees from San Jose State, despite having a learning disability. She was a high school PE teacher. She was also a health educator in St. Vincent in the Caribbean and on the Navajo reservation. She worked in Oakland for the American Cancer Society and then in recycling.
We bought a beautiful 20-acre farm in the remote community of Covelo in northeast Mendocino County. She did more on that farm as a weekender than anyone else had ever done. It was a four-hour drive from our apartment in Oakland, but we went there almost every weekend. When we arrived late on Friday, she ran out into the garden to see what had come up. She spent eight- to 10-hour days, even in the summer heat, working to grow all kinds of fruit and vegetables. In 1996, I left Oakland to take a job in Mendocino County. She did not have a job and stayed behind in the East Bay, so we met every weekend on our farm.
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She was able to move full-time to Mendocino County in 2000. We sold our farm and bought a cute A-frame house outside of Willits. It was gorgeous on three and a half acres of trees, bonsai, and bamboo plants (I think we had 100!) that she loved.
She worked as a school garden coordinator and in the recycling business. She became a bamboo expert, cherished her bonsai, and was a master gardener. Since she had no social anxiety, she knew all kinds of people. If she saw a plant or tree she liked, she’d stop the car and ring the bell.
She was also an amazing support to me when I was the executive director of the Mendocino County Youth Project. I think her happiest years were living in Mendocino County. She loved the Mendocino County Annual Professional Pianists Concert, eating at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens and swimming in the Eel River.
We left Willits in 2012 and moved to Sonoma County. In 2023 she was diagnosed with dementia, and her macular degeneration had progressed to the state of blindness. This vibrant, active, creative, energetic woman, who could still swim 50 laps and easily walk a mile, was reduced to lying in her bed listening to audiobooks.
She was horrified by what has been happening in our country and around the world. She had a peaceful, calm, dignified voluntary-assisted death in a beautiful rural area south of Basel. She leaves behind her beloved cousin Mary (David Courtney) in Fort Bragg, and a variety of friends, neighbors, co-workers, students and lots of people in hardware and grocery stores, restaurants, and other places in the community.
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