Linda was born and raised in Keyser, West Virginia, and has been imagining heaven since her Sunday school days. The loss of her mother when she was seven created a more urgent need to imagine the heaven where they would one day be reunited. Linda is a founding member and retired General Partner of a Southeastern Investment Management firm, and a writer for “Outlook by the Bay,” an East Coast magazine. She achieved a lifelong goal by earning her bachelor’s degree from Montreat College before her 50th birthday, and as best stated by a pioneering friend, “I earned the degree for my obituary, not my resume!”

The death of Linda’s beloved husband Jack in 2006 led her to Romans 8:28 which says that “… all things work for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose” and a desire to “work” something very good from the loss of Jack’s physical presence in her life. That “good” took the form of the Jack Matney Memorial Labyrinth, built in the center of Presbyterian Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina, in collaboration with Presbyterian Hospice and Palliative Care, Presbyterian Hospital Foundation and the generosity of loving friends. Blessed with an abiding faith and a passion for encouragement, Linda feels her calling is best described by Isaiah 50:4: “God has given me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a word him that is weary.”