Upon retirement in June 2023, from Children’s Aid on Staten Island, Linda enjoyed her free-time volunteer activities as a member of the P.E.O. sisterhood, enjoying her Chapter Z NY meetings, her Book Club and Bridge Club and many friendships. Linda would have been honored as a 60-year “Golden Girl” at the NYS PEO Convention in Binghamton this year.
About her childhood, Linda wrote "My days were filled with wonderful experiences, lots of friends, and playing Wizard of Oz make-believe. The meadows, before houses were built, were full of bluebells and buttercups. In the gully behind my house (long since filled in) we secretly lit illegal sparklers, hiding from the neighbors." In Des Moines, she attended Roosevelt High School making life-long friends.
Linda loved the wilderness. She was a camper and counselor at Camp Widjiwagan in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota and also sent her sons there. She was perhaps at her happiest canoeing and singing campfire songs.
She earned an English Literature degree at Sweet Briar College where she discovered Modern Dance. As a professional dancer, choreographer and teacher, she lived in New York in the mid-1960s attending the Graham school. She became Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of Iowa and Chair of the Dance Department at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. Ultimately, she found her dance home with Margie Beals in the Impulses Dance Company.
On Staten Island, fourteen years ago, she started the Child Welfare Functional Family Therapy Program at Children's Aid. At retirement, she was Director of the Children’s Aid FFT Programs.
Linda was a passionate advocate and supporter. As a Board-Certified Dance/Movement Therapist (BC-DMT) and Licensed Creative Arts Therapist (LCAT), she trained and worked in an inpatient psychiatric hospital. Linda developed a creative arts therapy program to support housing readiness in a Transitional Living Community, worked at a rehabilitation clinic for homeless men, and ran the services component at a large Manhattan supported housing facility.
She married Robert McAndrew in 1969. She wrote, "I went to a party where I spoke with an actor who had taken a class I taught. He was outrageously outspoken, funny, five years my junior, a non-reader, and willing to try anything… in one of the best moves of my life, I married him." They were together until he passed in 2015.
She is survived by her two adult sons, Patrick and Kevin, her sister, Judy, many dear extended family and friends, and her two dogs, Ginny and Ram.
Viewing will be at Harmon Funeral Home, 571 Forest Ave, Staten Island, NY on Tuesday, May 30th, 5:00-9:00 PM. Memorial service is scheduled for the morning of Wednesday, May 31st, 10:30AM-12:00PM. Guests are invited to informally speak and share stories or memories. Burial will follow at Silver Mount Cemetery at 12:30PM.
Flowers can be sent from Sam Gregorio Florist 718-447-7673 to Harmon Funeral Home, 571 Forest Ave, Staten Island, NY 10310.
Donations can be made in memoriam to The Nature Conservancy, The International OCD Foundation, The P.E.O. Sisterhood Foundation, or a charity of your choosing.
Fond memories and expressions of sympathy for the McAndrew family may be shared at
www.harmonfuneralhome.net for the
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