Margaret Linch Jordan

Margaret Ann Linch Jordan passed away on December 19, 2022, at her home in the Atlanta suburb of Vinings, where she had lived for almost 57 years. She had labored bravely against the slowly tightening grip of Parkinson’s disease for over 11 years, and remained capable of remarkable wit until she descended into her last hours of sleep.

She was born on October 26, 1933 in Atlanta, and was the only child of Dorcas Giles and Albert Osborn Linch. From her youth, Margaret Ann was known to her many cousins, especially the youngest ones, as “Bonann.”

She graduated from North Avenue Presbyterian School in 1951, an all-girls education before it became what is now The Westminster Schools. She received her college degree from Emory University in its first class of women in 1954, with a Bachelor of Arts in History. At Emory, she was a founder of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority chapter.

In the fall of 1954, near the Emory campus, she met William Daniel Jordan, a medical school student known as Dan. They married December 27, 1955, in Atlanta’s St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Over the next seven and one-half years, they would have six children born to them - and none were twins. To no one’s surprise, she became a full-time mother and homemaker.

Along the way, Dan received his M.D. degree from Emory, completed his postgraduate medical training at Grady and became a vascular surgeon. Beginning in 1960, at the Lovett nursery school on West Wesley Road, Margaret and Dan started a 21-year relationship with The Lovett School as all six children became graduates - in the years 1974, 1976, 1977, 1979, 1980, and 1981.

The Lovett connection was interrupted briefly when, in mid-1963, Dan entered the U.S. Air Force as Chief of Surgery at the base in Mountain Home, Idaho. They returned to Atlanta in late summer 1965, where Dan practiced vascular surgery for over 30 years, and lived near Lovett in the Cochise neighborhood of Vinings until 1995.

In 1979, Margaret and Dan joined Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, and remained active members there for the next 40-plus years.

After her children became adults, she earned a paralegal certificate in 1986; was a member of The History Class of 1884; took art classes under the tutelage of Chris diDomizio and had works accepted into local juried shows. Her home is graced by her own work as an artist. During this time, she acquired from her oldest grandchild a new nickname - “BaaBee,” and it became a term of affection for everyone.

Starting in 1992, after the Cochise house did not quite accommodate all the grandchildren, and continuing for the next 29 consecutive years, BaaBee and Dan began an annual week-long summer gathering of their children with their families at Callaway Gardens. It was no small undertaking, as the Summer Family Adventure came to include 29 grandchildren. They called it “Cousins’ Week at Callaway,” and it created unique emotional bonds in an extended family.

She is survived by her six children: Albert Linch Jordan (Shannon) of Birmingham, Dana Giles Jago (Ken) of Canton, Georgia, Margaret Noel Leithart (Peter) of Birmingham, Amanda Bonann Simpson (Mike) of Charlotte, Eleanor Grey Jordan Nakayama of Birmingham, William Daniel Jordan, Jr. (Cynthia) of Atlanta. Her husband Dan predeceased her in March 2021.

Funeral services will be at H.M. Patterson & Son - Oglethorpe Hill Chapel at 1 p.m. on Friday, December 23. The family will receive visitors beginning at 11:00 a.m.