Linda Kay Mulligan

April 6, 1938 – January 10, 2025

Associate Professor Emerita of Sociology,

The Ohio State University

Linda was born in Huntington, West Virginia as an only child to Robert E. and Thelma C. Wagenhals. The Wagenhals family was prominent in Ohio, where her grandfather, Edward T. Wagenhals, was president of Ohio Power. Linda’s father was Head of Quality Control for the Timken Roller Bearing Co., and in New York, where her uncle was a Vice President of RCA Victor. Linda is survived by his daughter Patsy Coffey.

Linda graduated from The Ohio State University, first with a bachelor’s degree in 1961 and a master’s degree in 1963. While in college, she was a member of Kappa Phi, sang in the university chorus and participated in “Block O.” In 1969, Linda received a PhD from The Ohio State University in Sociology. She was then soon hired to work on mental health issues for the State of Ohio, serving in that capacity in close collaboration with Elisabeth Stern, Director of Social Work for the State of Ohio.

Linda was a brilliant scholar and feminist. Her PhD dissertation, “Women in Marriage: A Study of Social Roles, Marriages, and Self-Esteem…,” demonstrated a very significant correlation between a woman working in a job outside her home and that woman’s own self-esteem. Her later research was published in the journal Sociology and in the International Journal of Comparative Sociology. Linda expanded her research to include urban sociological development. She taught many wonderful students in the Department of Sociology at The Ohio State University from 1973 until her retirement, in 2011, to New York City and the New Hampshire seacoast, while remaining an avid daily reader of The New York Times.

Linda is survived by her husband, Professor Emeritus Bernard Mulligan, a mathematical physicist with more than 40 years of teaching and still-ongoing research in the Department of Physics at The Ohio State University. Bernard has a PhD in mathematical physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

In addition to her husband, Linda is also survived by her son Scott Mulligan and his wife Jordana Dym, both faculty members at Skidmore College, and by her son Mark Mulligan, CEO of VM Development, and his wife Kate Mulligan, Executive Director of the Lakewood Ranch Community Foundation in Florida.

Linda’s most precious survivors are her two granddaughters, Ainsley and Esme Mulligan, who live with their father and mother Mark and Kate in Sarasota, Florida. They were the light of her life, and Linda spent as much time as she could helping to contribute to their care and learning.

Linda will be buried on January 24, 2024 in the Oakwood Cemetery Annex in Montgomery, Alabama. Many members of the McDonald family, ancestors of Linda’s husband Bernard, are buried in the older Oakwood Cemetery in Montgomery. In the Annex, Linda will be joining Bernard’s Barefield grandparents and her mother-in law, Catherine Barefield Mulligan.

The services, provided by Leak Memory Funeral Home, will be limited to a family gravesite service.