Linda Dean Bynum

1945 - 2024

Linda Dean Bynum, a resident of Waveland, Mississippi, died Jan. 8 at Poydras Home in New Orleans, following a long battle with multiple myeloma. She was born Sept. 19, 1945, in Lake Village, Arkansas, the first child of Dora Mae Riley of Lake Village and Felix Jackson Bynum of Dermott, Arkansas. She is survived by her sister, Chris Bynum of New Orleans, and her devoted friend Al Asher of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, as well as a host of treasured cousins and lifelong friends. Linda's parents were stationed in New Orleans before her father shipped out to the South Pacific during World War II. Her doctor here had given Linda's mother a stern warning: "If you don't get yourself home, you're going to have that baby on a streetcar." So a few weeks before the war ended, Dora Bynum moved back home to Lake Village, just in time for her mother, a nurse at the local hospital, to help deliver a 10-pound baby girl. Linda entered the world with innate curiosity. As a dedicated teacher, she strove to nurture the same in her charges. Starting as a nursing student at Memphis State University, she switched to education, receiving her bachelor's degree from the University of Arkansas in Monticello, and her master's at Loyola University. She taught special-education students as well as gifted ones and spent some years in McAllen, Texas, where she taught migrant children on the Mexican border. As an artist, she worked in both clay and oils. She traveled extensively in the 1970s and '80s, heading to Iceland decades before it turned into a tourist hot spot. She traveled to Europe around the time Frommer's "Europe on $5 a Day" had become $10 a day in the '70s, her wanderings taking her from England to the Czech Republic. She also explored Australia, New Guinea, Mexico and Hawaii. Even though she described herself as an introvert, she turned up in the crowds at notable events, from Times Square's New Year's Eve to the Apollo launches at Cape Canaveral before its rechristening as Cape Kennedy. Linda was an avid reader. Her younger sister remembers using her as a call-in encyclopedia long before the internet provided instant information. She was an animal lover, growing up with pets ranging from her high school's mascot ram to horses and goats to cats and dogs to chickens and turtles. The quality most friends valued about Linda was her remarkable and sometimes jolting straight-forwardness. Those close to her never doubted the sincerity of anything she said and loved her greatly for it. Linda credited her physician Dr. Bart Barlogie, former director of the Myeloma Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in Little Rock for the treatment that prolonged her life from the predicted three years to more than 17. She was also grateful to Denis McDonald of New Orleans, a former king of Carnival, who shared the same diagnosis, for his compassionate counsel. Any gift or kind deed bestowed by Linda she kept to herself, embracing scripture (Matthew 6) she had memorized at a young age: "Be careful not to do your acts of righteousness before men, to be seen by them. Expressions of sympathy can be made as donations to Kismet Pet Adoptions in New Orleans (donations accepted on Facebook), Clearwater Wildlife Sanctuary in Covington, La. (clearwatersanctuary.org), the Humane Society of South Mississippi (https://www.hssm.org/donate) or your favorite animal-rescue organization. A private burial by Griffin Culpepper Funeral Home took place Jan. 10 at Dermott Cemetery in Arkansas. A memorial service will be announced at a later date.