Linda Diane Mallon

Linda Mallon, age 69, of Washington, D.C., loving wife, beloved mother of three, grandmother of two, friend of so many — and, we think she would want us to emphasize, fervent daughter of New Jersey — died of breast cancer May 25, at home with her husband.

​She is predeceased by her parents, Paul and Helen (Ross) Mallon of Basking Ridge, N.J.; a pet cemetery’s worth of much-loved cats, who likely knocked her down with excitement upon her arrival in the hereafter; and Gordon Lightfoot.

Linda grew up in Basking Ridge, the daughter of a nurse and a WWII G.I.-turned-banker; she inherited her mother’s deeply ingrained drive to help and serve others, and her father’s implacable sense of hard work and integrity (but perhaps not his math skills). Didn’t matter: The girl could write. She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with an English B.A. in 1975 and began her career as a reporter for the Morristown (later Morris County) Daily Record, where she was known for her love of cats, books, and vocabulary. (To quote a former colleague, when she moved on, “the newsroom lost its chief unailurophobic user of big words.”)

The Record is also where she met her future husband, John Mueller. He was smitten from the start; she was galled that he stole her beat. Love ultimately won over annoyance. She eventually followed him to the District, and the two married in 1979. They had three children, Christian, Peter, and Lucy, in neat, three-year increments. Linda was a very organized woman.

And again, a writer. Turned editor. She was great at taking topics that would lower a lay person’s heart rate, and making them accessible — even fascinating. She knew how to ferret a good story out of anyone, from a tight-lipped dinner companion to a nonagenarian.

From 1980 to 1989, she was an editor for Modern Maturity, the AARP official magazine, eventually leading the Washington Bureau for five years. With the birth of her third child, she left to be home with the kids, but picked up a position as a book reviewer for USA Today, regularly writing bylined reviews of adult contemporary and young adult fiction. Every month, stacks of unproofed galleys arrived at her doorstep, an awesome thing for a child to wander through, and she filed reviews peppered with more than a few bon mots that would make their way onto dust jackets. As in: “Jack and Sarah are as delicious a couple as Rhett and Scarlett. The three-hankie ending to their long love affair will definitely make you give a [very mild expletive]."

In 2000, Linda went back to full-time work at the American Academy of Actuaries, where she was first managing editor of member publications, then editor-in-chief of Contingencies, the Academy’s flagship magazine. Under her stewardship, the publication won several awards, including the SNAP Excel Gold. She requested that then-senators Barack Obama and John McCain write articles defining their competing visions for the future of healthcare. (Both complied.) She worked with actuaries to analyze why it makes perfect mathematical sense that celebrities die in threes, or how football coaches can use game theory to rethink the fourth-down risk, or why you’re wrong about the answer to the Monty Hall problem. She published an investigative piece on Franz Kafka’s day job as a multiline insurance adjuster, which concluded that, despite grumbling, he probably actually liked it. She commissioned illustrations from the late Reuben award-winning editorial cartoonist, Richard Thompson. If you pause the movie “About Schmidt” at the exact right point, you can see an issue she edited next to Jack Nicholson’s meaty face.

In 2002, she officially became a published book author with “Franklin's Daughters: Profiles of Penn Women,” which she co-wrote with her long-time friend, editor, and writing partner, Anita Sama. Published by the University of Pennsylvania Press to mark the 125th anniversary of the first women students at Penn, it depicts the struggles and successes of the University's female pioneers.

Her last job, before a long-awaited and much-deserved retirement, was as Senior Retirement Communications Advisor for the National Rural Electrical Cooperative (NRECA).

In her spare time, Linda loved to read, swim, and hike. She and her daughter walked a 120-kilometer section of the Camino de Santiago from Ferrol to Santiago de Compostela (known as the “Camino Inglés”) in the summer of 2016. She volunteered with numerous organizations, including So Others Might Eat and D.C. Central Kitchen, staffing vehicles that delivered meals to unhoused people throughout the city. She served on her church’s Arts Council, designing programs that reliably placed posteriors in pews, and, as its chair, shepherded with a firm hand the scheduling of visual art exhibits with musical performances. She took inordinate joy in spoiling her grandkids and over-valorizing her children’s accomplishments. She finished every New York Times Sunday crossword puzzle and boasted an enviable Wordle score.

Perhaps it was because she won the genetic lottery (born in New Jersey), but it needs to be said: Linda Mallon was the soul of the party, the fizz in our lives, the one to sit by, the plural cats’ pajamas, warmth itself.

She is survived by her husband, John, brother Stephen and his family, three children and their spouses, two grandchildren, her beloved Aunt Margaret and Uncle Joe Hey, countless other loved and far-flung family members, and many friends.

Services will be held at National United Methodist Church, Metropolitan Memorial Campus, 3401 Nebraska Ave NW, July 15, 2023, at 2 p.m, with a reception to follow. She will be interred at Congressional Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, contributions may be made to So Others Might Eat.

For more information, please visit: Lindamallon.com