Ann Linthorst

Beloved mother and grandmother, Ann Tremaine Linthorst, of Boise, Idaho, daughter to Harmon and Mary Lee Tremaine, entered into God's Kingdom in Hermosa Beach, California on May 31st, 2023 at the age of 89.

Ann will be remembered by all who knew her as a seeker of Truth, a lover of Beauty, and as kind a human soul as there ever was. A devoted wife, mother, mother-in-law, and grandmother, she lived a life of service and commitment to integrity and love.

Ann is survived by her two boys, Thomas and Erik, her daughter-in-law Jennie, and her five grandchildren, Ryan, Matthew, Graham, T?a, and Michaela. She also leaves behind her "sangha" of close women friends whom she called sisters.

A Celebration of Life will take place at the Verandas Beach House in Manhattan Beach, California on Sunday, July 16th, 2023 from 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM. In honor of Ann's love of color and beauty, the family requests that guests dress colorfully, and bring a favorite memory of Ann to share. To RSVP or for questions, please email Jennie.Linthorst@gmail.com. Donations in Ann's honor can be made to the World Wildlife Foundation (here).

Ann was born July 14th, 1933 in Boise, Idaho, to her pediatrician father and her psychiatric social worker mother. She graduated from high school in 1951 and attended the University of Idaho in Moscow, where she joined the Pi Beta Phi sorority and sang in the University choir, the Vandaleers. After her sophomore year, in 1953, she transferred to Antioch College in Yellow Springs Ohio, where she graduated with an A.B. degree in Psychology. During her time in Antioch, she worked several internship jobs, including typing scripts for radio soap operas at NBC in Rockefeller Center in New York City.

In order to save for graduate school, after graduation from Antioch, Ann spent a year back in Idaho, as a Field Director for the Girl Scouts of America. She fondly remembers eating leftover girl scout cookies with coffee every morning at work.

In 1957 she enrolled in the Master of Divinity program at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. In 1959, she boarded the MS Statendam of the Holland America line, along with her best friend Barbara, to embark on a year of study abroad at New College, the Divinity School of the University of Edinburgh. During the spring term of her year abroad, Ann and Barbara joined a group tour of Egypt and the Holy Land.

In 1966 she entered a three-year training program in Pastoral Counseling at the American Foundation of Religion and Psychology, in New York City. There she would meet a handsome Jesuit just off the boat from Holland, and two years later, in April of 1968, she and Jan Francis Linthorst were married in Newark, New Jersey.

In 1970 they welcomed their firstborn son, Thomas Anton, and sixteen months later their second child, Erik Jan.

With their two young sons in tow, Ann and Jan traveled west and settled in Orange, California, where Jan began work for the ministry of Robert Schuller. A few years later, both Jan and Ann became Licensed Marriage and Family Therapists. They built a thriving Southern California private practice that spanned 30 years, during which time they organized and facilitated dozens of conferences for the Institute of Metapsychiatry and the PAGL Foundation.

Ann would go on to write five books, including A Gift of Love: Marriage as a Spiritual Journey, Mothering as a Spiritual Journey, Soul Kissed: The Experience of Bliss in Everyday Life, and My Love Affairs with Life, A Spiritual Memoir.

An avid walker, while in Orange, Ann discovered an overgrown section of Irvine Park, where she walked daily, alighting at the flowers and wild tangle of nature. For decades this was her exercise and mediation practice. She would mark her paths with small pink ribbons, so she could find her way out of the thicket. After years of this, she became known as the Ribbon Lady, for blazing trails later cleared by others.

An anglophile and lover of travel, in 2000, Ann led her husband, son Erik, and daughter-in-law Jennie on a month-long "pilgrimage" to eight medieval English cathedrals, attending the daily evensong services at each.

In 2001, Ann and Jan retired and moved to Turtle Rock Vistas in Irvine, California where she would live until moving to Sunrise Assisted Living, Hermosa Beach in 2022. Her husband, Jan, passed away in 2005 after 37 years of marriage.

To her sons, Ann will be remembered for her constant, loving presence in their lives, and for her quirks, which included her love of wordplay, old ad jingles and novelty songs like Marizy Doats. For holiday gatherings, she would ask each attendee to share something that inspired them, be it a poem or a song. These mandatory shares became the backbone of family gatherings, bringing forward each person's authenticity and elevating the occasion.

She passed peacefully of natural causes surrounded by her sons and daughter-in-law.

The following is a poem Ann wrote that captures her essence.

Aspiration

I would not be a single thing,

that I may be the whole.

To see the world through twig's eye view

would never be my goal.

I would not plead the sparrow's cause

and call the hawk a foe,

for then I'd miss the radiance

with which the world's a-glow.

If I must look through darkened glass,

I'll swear the dark's a lie,

and turn my face up to the light

which plummets from the sky.

I'd not allow a human sense

to hide Love's blazing grace,

but open, empty, quit of self,

see Beauty's holy face.

-Ann Tremaine Linthorst