Linda Loomis, 89, of Ithaca, NY, died peacefully on July 2 at Bridges Cornell Heights. An enthusiastic and engaging Ithacan for over sixty years, Linda sang, worked, and volunteered her way around her adopted hometown, making friends, applying her skills to a wide variety of jobs and causes, and always asking questions and learning wherever she went.
Linda was born in Elkhart, Indiana, on December 10, 1935, to Peter Burr Loomis III and Kathryn (Thompson) Loomis. Two weeks after her birth, the family moved to Birmingham, Michigan, where Peter worked as an engineer in the automobile industry, and Kathryn became a civic leader. Linda grew up in a family environment that encouraged curiosity and creativity. Peter taught his children how to use tools, and they were allowed to experiment in their father’s workshop. This sparked in Linda a lifelong love of working with her hands. During a particularly stressful school year, her mother enrolled her in an art class as an antidote; Linda found bliss here, too. She also loved car camping trips with her family, during which she and her sister, Marcia, would sleep on top of the car in the family boat.
Many of her favorite memories centered on the family’s summer cottage on Higgins Lake, Michigan, where multiple generations of her father’s family gathered (and continue to gather) every summer to reune, relax, sail, swim, play games, and enjoy one another’s company and that of family friends from other nearby cottages. Linda loved playing canasta and poker with her cousins, following her mother and aunts as they wandered through the woods identifying plants and bird calls, acting in original plays written by family and friends, and joining in informal family symphony performances. She became a proficient captain of a variety of small watercraft – Sailfish, canoes, and rowboats – as she and her siblings and cousins enthusiastically maneuvered their small fleet around the lake. This yearly retreat continued to be a constant throughout Linda’s life.
After graduating from Birmingham High School, Linda enrolled at Ohio Wesleyan University, where she sang in the choir, pledged a sorority, and won the Eastern Shore Division Women’s Sailing Championship with the sailing team, but she was not as interested in the required religious study classes and soon flunked out. At loose ends, she took a job working for sculptor Marshall Fredericks in his studio. Her main task there was to help create the sculpture’s metal framework and prepare it for Mr. Fredericks to mold; this was much more in tune with Linda’s interests.
Still wishing to complete her undergraduate education, Linda enrolled at Eastern Michigan College, where she completed her BA in Psychology and Sociology in 1958.
While at EMC, she met Patrick Fischer, a master’s degree candidate in mathematics at the University of Michigan. They married in December 1958, and moved to Massachusetts, where Patrick finished his PhD at MIT in 1962 and Linda worked as a lab assistant, collecting data and tending to hamsters for a diabetes study. Pat was offered a position as an associate professor at Harvard, and the young couple moved to Winchester. Their son, Carl, was born in 1965, and a move to Ithaca soon followed, after Cornell recruited Pat to assist in the founding of their computer science department.
Not long after their arrival in Ithaca, the marriage fell apart. Linda suddenly found herself the single mother of a son with special needs in an unfamiliar environment. As therapy, she joined the East Hill Flying Club and learned to fly small planes. She got her instrument rating and loved the sense of empowerment her pilot’s license gave her. When Carl was two, she borrowed a club plane, buckled him into a seat with a necklace of Cheerios, and flew to Montreal to meet her parents at the 1967 Exposition. Her family was quite impressed!
She strove to be a good mother to Carl and made sometimes heartbreaking sacrifices to ensure that he received the support and services he needed to thrive. She was an advocate for her son, doing her best to provide him with good teachers and enrichment activities, but eventually she allowed him to leave her to live with his father, anticipating that Pat would have access to better resources for Carl.
Linda sought community, which she found with the First Unitarian Society of Ithaca. An active and devoted member for six decades, she delighted in everything the church offered. She attended weekly services, sang in their choir, created silkscreened posters for and volunteered at rummage sales and for Babies First, assisted in building and grounds projects, helped at the congregation’s water stop during the annual Relay for Life, and participated in almost every way she could. In turn, the church and its kind and caring congregation sustained her, offering support and assistance whenever she needed it: for her many relocations around Ithaca, in times of illness, during her later years when she sometimes needed help with household tasks, and in her final weeks, as many of her dear friends gathered around her to keep her company.
Ithaca’s vibrant world held many other treasures for Linda. She loved rowing in a women’s over-50’s eight at the Cascadilla Boat Club, singing with the Ithaca Community Chorus, practicing aikido, repairing donated appliances with her friends in the Fix-it Collaborative at the ReUse Center, learning about botany with the Liberty Hyde Bailey Garden Club, and hiking and maintaining trails with the Cayuga Trails Club. She volunteered with the Ithaca-Cayuga Kiwanis Club, eventually serving as their president. She gave her time happily to the Southern Tier Food Bank, the Citizen Pruners, the Sciencenter, and Pegasys Community Media, for whom she directed, videotaped and edited local programming on a wide range of topics, all of which fascinated her. And she adored folk-dancing, singing, or listening to live music of all kinds with friends and soon-to-be-friends wherever they gathered in this culturally rich town.
Linda loved people. She cared deeply about her friends, and about anyone anywhere whom she felt needed help. Throughout her life, she made helping others her priority. This extended to the whole planet; she was an ardent environmentalist and a proponent of sustainability. She never threw anything away that could possibly be reused or recycled. How fortunate that she lived in Ithaca, where the re-use lifestyle is so well supported!
Linda adored Ithaca. When asked to reflect on her life, she began by singing the praises of her town: “Ithaca is a city of music, public service, and a variety of jobs.” The same could be said of her. She edited course catalogs at Ithaca College. At Cornell, she researched the effectiveness of NYS employee alcoholism recovery programs and coordinated financial aid for the veterinary school. She served as a quality control inspector for Precision Filters, and assisted in bringing a life-saving medical device through the FDA approval process at Transonic Systems. She especially enjoyed hands-on work; one of her favorite tasks involved hard-wiring computers out of her home. She was quite proficient with a soldering iron!
Her natural curiosity led her to love travel, and though somewhat limited financially in this respect, Linda found wonderful opportunities to visit some extraordinary places. At the invitation of a kind friend with an extra berth, she cruised around Alaska. She sang her way to Russia to perform Rachmaninoff in St. Petersburg with the Community Chorus in 1994. With various family and friends, she explored Germany, Hawaii, and North Carolina’s Outer Banks. In 2002, her brother won a Mastercard sweepstakes and treated the entire extended Loomis family to a week on a private island near Tortola, where Linda was fascinated by the Caribbean flora and fauna, and delighted by a day trip on a chartered catamaran.
Linda was predeceased by her parents; her sister, Marcia Loomis Calvin; her brother, Peter Burr Loomis IV; and her beloved dog, Squirt, a Very Good Boy. She is survived by her son, Carl Perry Fischer of Chattanooga, Tennessee; her sister-in-law, Ann Ripton Loomis of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; and several nephews and nieces: Lucy Calvin Skeldon, of Wakefield, Massachusetts; Nathaniel Glenn Calvin and Polly Siegel of Los Altos, California; Gilbert Ripton Loomis and Carmela Maccarone Loomis of Odenton, Maryland; and Austin George Loomis of Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. She also leaves behind a great-niece, Kathryn Chalmers Skeldon of Wakefield, Massachusetts, and four great-nephews: Drew Michael Loomis and Adam Patrick Loomis of Odenton, Maryland and Christopher Adam Skeldon and Alexander Loomis Skeldon of Wakefield, Massachusetts, as well as many dear cousins, and treasured friends in the Ithaca area and beyond.
A private burial service was held at Greensprings Natural Cemetery in Newfield, New York. Linda’s life will be celebrated on September 20, 2025, at 4 PM at the First Unitarian Society of Ithaca, 306 North Aurora Street. Friends and family are warmly invited to attend and join us in honoring and remembering Linda!
In lieu of flowers, those wishing to honor Linda are invited to make a donation to Babies First (via the First Unitarian Society of Ithaca website, www.unitarian.ithaca.ny.us), or to the Food Bank of the Southern Tier (https://www.foodbankst.org/donate/).
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