---- — TRAVERSE CITY --Linda, 64, grew up on the Old Mission Peninsula, attending Old Mission School and later graduating from Traverse City High School. However, as recently discovered report cards showed, academic pursuits were not her passion. Her true passion was animals. This manifested early on and continued throughout her life with a long procession of creatures found, rescued, purchased and traded for. From a very early age, Linda believed that animals should not just be viewed from afar, but brought home and taken under her care. This included raccoons, chipmunks, squirrels, pigs, ducks and Walter the pigeon, who would follow her to work on the family farm each day. It also included several fox kits — one of which enjoyed lazy afternoons playing and sharing food with the family fox hound — and, to the surprise of those at home one day, a baby skunk. This last addition was loudly vetoed by a mother whose patience had worn thin. But it was as a teenager that she discovered the animal that she would have a love affair for the rest of her life: The horse, the first being her beloved Topper.After high school, she married and moved to Pennsylvania while her husband attended college. They had a son, Scott, and moved back to the Traverse City area, soon purchasing a house with several acres of land in Williamsburg. Shortly after, they brought home their second addition, a daughter, Nicole (despite the attempted loud veto of a son whose patience had worn thin). It was on this land, newly enclosed with a fence and improved with a small barn, that her passion began to take hold again. Throughout the years, many a creature passed through the doors of that barn (and occasionally the house), cats, dogs, a steer, a mule, ducks, chickens, turkeys and rabbits, and of course, many horses, including a pair of ponies for her kids. As her riding improved, Linda began competitive trail riding, first on her horse Rusty, then later on a mule named Babe. This last edition elicited laughs from many of her fellow equestrians — until she began cleaning up at the awards banquets.Around this time, she volunteered at the Cherryland Humane Society and joined Voice of the Horse, an organization dedicated to rescuing large animals from abuse and neglect. Many of these poor creatures found temporary refuge and comfort in her barn, nursed back to health under her care.Later, Linda moved to Chicago, where she earned a degree in hospitality management from DeVry University. Afterward, she settled in Atlanta, where she opened a pizza restaurant, helping the students at a nearby college eat their weekly quota of pies. In the mid-90s, she moved back to Traverse City, first working as a restaurant manager at the Grand Traverse Resort and then working at the Mapleton Market on the Old Mission Peninsula, a job she held for the rest of her life. During this time, she discovered her desire to help others wasn't limited to animals, and she began assisting a woman with MS several evenings a week, forming a friendship that lasted over a decade and to the end.Born to the late Lawrence "Bud" and Bessie "Betty" (Helfrich) Andrus in Traverse City, Linda passed away at Munson Hospice House after a brief battle with cancer. She is survived by her two children, two brothers, two sisters, two cats, a horse and a community left just a little better by her being in it.A gathering to celebrate her life will be held on Nov. 12, 2011, with details found at linda.wertime.com. In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Cherryland Humane Society (cherrylandhumane.org). The family is being served by The Reynolds-Jonkhoff Funeral Home.