Linda Sue Capocy

She was born April 30, 1958, in Kendallville, Indiana. Though she never lost her love for her hometown (KPCNews remained her browser homepage for years), she eventually settled in Florence, Arizona. She lived in a quirky little oasis in the desert, with days spent watching the birds outside her window. She cursed the dreaded woodpeckers that mistook the house for a tree and pointed out every cardinal who came to visit. If you asked about her home, she’d tell you about the Civil War soldier she was convinced haunted the yard or complain that Rocky, the raccoon-shaped tree stump whom she’d named, had to be removed.

Linda was a character, through and through. She was half-crazy, half-hilarious, and all heart. She had a disarming kindness that drew people to her; it was hard to feel unwelcome in her presence. Even those who’d never met her sensed this quality – being cornered in a truck stop bathroom for 20 minutes while a stranger told her their life story was surprisingly commonplace in the life of Linda.

She was not without flaws, though. She never met a curb she couldn’t hit, was notoriously late to every event, had the gift of gab so bad that no secret was ever truly safe, somehow enjoyed the scent of patchouli, and drank more black coffee than the human gut should ever have had to endure. But her infectious wheeze-laugh never failed to make up for those faults.

She juggled a variety of roles throughout her life. She was a wife (to David), a mom (to Jon, Stacy, Cayla, and Jenny), a grandma (to Holly, Madison, Kyndal, Ryleigh, Jonathon, and Murphy), a great-grandma (to Sarah and Copeland), a sister (to Janet, Chuck, Shelton, Carol, and Jerry Dale), a daughter (to Earl and Donna), and a friend (to everyone else). She loved fiercely – and sometimes irrationally – and will be bitterly missed by all who knew her.