Dr. Linda S. Gordon

Dr. Linda Ruth Silverstein Gordon, beloved wife, mother, grandmother, and Professor Emeritus of Languages and Literature at Worcester State University, died on December 3 at the age of 78.

In her more than thirty years teaching at Boston State College and Worcester State University, Dr. Gordon taught American literature courses to thousands of students. She enjoyed spending time with her husband of fifty-two years, Clifford Gordon; watching her children and grandchildren grow; and being part of local Jewish and folk-dance communities.

Linda was born in New York City in 1945. Her father, Hyman Silverstein, was the child of Polish Jewish immigrants, and attended City College of New York before beginning his career as a public elementary school teacher in Brooklyn. Linda’s mother, Sylvia Block Silverstein, immigrated from Russia at the age of two and worked in the jewelry industry before meeting Hyman on the Lower East Side and moving to the Flatbush area of Brooklyn to start a family. Six years after Linda’s birth, her brother Stuart was born, and they grew up in the Ocean Parkway area, spending memorable summers in New Hampshire.

Like her father, Linda was a dedicated and successful student. She attended Lafayette High School in Brooklyn and went on to Brooklyn College at age sixteen, where she graduated at the top of her college class. She received her Ph.D. in English from Harvard University in 1971, focusing on nineteenth-century American literature and completing a dissertation on The American Heroine. Upon graduating, she began her teaching career at Boston State College in 1971 and moved to Worcester State College (later University) in 1982.

While in graduate school, Linda met Clifford Gordon at Harvard Hillel, and they married in 1971. Settling in Brookline, Massachusetts, she balanced work with starting a family, giving birth to her first child, Leah, in 1975, and her second, Adam, in 1981. She was proud to see both of them follow in her footsteps by becoming college professors.

A dedicated and engaging professor, she taught survey courses on nineteenth-century American literature as well as courses in English composition, sharing her love for language and literature with generations of students. Linda especially loved teaching Hawthorne, Melville, Wharton, and Dickinson, as well as teaching about representations of women in American literature. Her own career modeled the sort of quiet strength and resilience that she taught about so frequently in her classes, while her success helped open doors for women in academia. She taught at Worcester State University until she retired in 2003.

While she struggled with multiple sclerosis for much of her life, especially in her last decade, Linda never lost her determination, her love of reading, her concern for family, or her infectious smile. She is survived by her husband, Clifford Gordon; her brother and sister-in-law Stuart and Jennifer Silverstein; her son and daughter-in-law Adam and Molly Gordon; her daughter and son-in-law Leah Gordon and Adam Contois; and her grandchildren Miriam Gordon, Elijah Gordon, and Sylvia Gordon.

Donations in her memory may be made to Worcester State University Scholarships at Giving to WSU, https://tinyurl.com/Giving-to-WSU

Graveside Services were held on Thursday, December 7 at 10:30am at Ohavi Sedeck Cemetery, 350 Grove Street, West Roxbury, MA.