I met Linda when she came to Harvard to work with me in the Teacher Education Program  Harvard was just getting back into the business and Linda was a tremendous help to me in formulating and managing the program.  She taught a great course called Teaching and Curriculum which was greatly needed for these new teachers. 
I will always remember her warmth and her Texas accent--so endearing.to someone who of course doesn't have an accent from the Midwest.
I once took her to a country fair in Northern Maine; she loved it and seemed right at home!  . 
Great person, great mother, great friend. Your contributions to our scholarship will live along with fond memories of our chats about teaching and teacher education. 

Katherine (Kay) Merseth 

I met Linda in 1979 when Gail MacColl, project officer at the National Institute of Education, introduced us by letter. We both had research grants for qualitative research studies and we both were young mothers with part time appointments on the edge of academia. We met and as Gail predicted had much in common both personally and professionally.I lived in Milwaukee but soon got a position at UW-Madison, so Linda and I were both in Madison, Wisconsin during the work week for a while. Before long, she got her position at Rice University and moved to Texas. But our relationship lasted over the years fed by nearly annual opportunities to have long dinners together at professional meetings in cities around the country. We read each other’s work and discussed professional issues, but we also kept each other up with news of our families.
Linda was passionate about education and especially about education for children who did not arrive at the school door with advantages. She was also passionate about education as formation for citizenship. She was able to clarify how experience on the ground, the daily mutual labors of teachers and students, is intimately affected by the larger forces of educational policy. And she was also able to illuminate how educational formation of students has profound effects not just on individual lives but on the life of the body politic. Her work lives on and will continue to have profound effects, both through the many people she touched face to face and through those who encounter her ideas only through the printed page.

I first met Linda in the Spring of 1990 to discuss the possibility of my creating a teacher education project in early childhood language and literacy under the auspices of the Center for Education.  I'm not only extremely proud to report School Literacy and Culture is now in its 31st year at Rice, I'm proud to call Linda its godmother.

I want to also share how struck I was upon meeting Linda back then—as I continued to be in the three decades thereafter—what an incredibly agile and far reaching mind she had.  There wasn't a subject she wasn't interested in or knowledgeable of.  She viewed education, her own specialization, like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, one interlocking piece after another, no matter the number of pieces.  Critically, the finished puzzle Linda ceaselessly sought to create was a socially just education for all.  Her scholarly work in this area, including her game-changing Contradictions of Control bespoke this mission in total.

As many have testified, I count myself privileged to also have been a friend of Linda's.  She was generous beyond words with her time and attention.  And, as a persistent out-of-towner, I can say she ran the best version of a home away from home I have ever been in.  

She will be truly missed.

My thoughts are with her beloved daughters, Katherine and Carrie, and most precious grandson, Luke.

Patsy Cooper

i met linda in the middle of my junior year in high school, when i moved to tulsa.  she became a fast friend, lots of books, lots of humor, lots of going to pennington's for french fries...with boys...she was a maid of honor in my first wedding...so much more to tell, but bottom line, she was simply the best.  i am in tears....and so grateful to have known her.  love to all who did....

Ugh. I’m overcome with emotion as I write this. Mrs. McNeil, as we called her then, was a second mother to me in the late 80s and early 90s. I loved her story telling and the way she fiercely and joyfully loved her two vibrant and precocious daughters. Somehow she seemed to find a way to always be there for her children while also crushing it professionally as a professor at Rice. Funny, compassionate, and so proud of her daughters. Thank you for opening up your home and your heart to me. Rest In Peace.