Linda LeBoutillier's Obit in the Daily Local Yokel, February 2021
I simply will not get Linda LeBoutillier out of my mind. Did we ever speak with each other? Surely she was over at my house, at my sister's birthday or something? Did not take good care of herself, from the looks of things. But wait, she was ill.
Obit mentions her last husband, but there were a couple of others. Pace her old pal Scott K.'s description, she did finish Bryn Mawr.
High school group photo. Far right, second row.
LINDA LEBOUTILLIER OBITUARYLinda Anne LeBoutillier 69, of Downingtown, died Tuesday February 23, 2021. She was the wife of Francesco X. Moscia with whom she shared 26 years together. She was the daughter of the late Roberts and Zelinda Paolini LeBoutillier. She attended Henderson High School, graduating as valedictorian class of 1969. She graduated cum laude Bryn Mawr College class of 1972, and received a Masters of Arts English and Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. Most of her career was working in sales, purchasing, merchandising, and marketing for the family business, Waterloo Gardens Inc. Her passion was reading about history, plants, and just about everything. Traveling was what she loved most, starting as a young adult with trips to Jamaica every year and then traveling the world. In later years Disney was her favorite vacation destination along with any warm beach location. Ocean cruising was another pastime in her life. In addition to her husband, she is survived by her stepson Francesco B. Moscia of Downingtown, a brother, Roberts D. LeBoutillier of Exton, three sisters, Rene LeBoutillier of Springfield, MO; Susan LeBoutillier of Devon; Elise LeBoutillier of Collegeville. Donations can be made to the Philadelphia Horticultural Society https://phsonline.org/support-phs/target-your-impact/donate We will be celebrating her life at a service this spring. Published by The Daily Local from Feb. 26 to Feb. 27, 2021.
Comments
Linda was sort of unclear on the exact connection between her father's family and the Best & Co. (department store) enterprise. Best & Co. had no presence in SE Pennsylvania, and anyway went out of business around 1969, so it didn't have the stature of John Wanamaker or Strawbridge & Clothier, enterprises you'd see and think about all the time.
But John confirmed that there was indeed a strong connection between HIS OWN LeBoutillier relations and the department store. Whether Linda also had a substantive connection there is now doubtful. However her mother's grandparents were immigrants, from central Italy. And if you have proximate immigrant ancestors like that, you're going to favor them, over some Huguenots or whatever from around 1700. Especially since it was the Italians who founded the nursery-and-gardening enterprise that made this branch of the LeBoutillier family wealthy.
I understand the situation entirely. If I have forebears twelve generations ago from Bury St Edmunds, and other ancestors who came from County Cork six generations back (maybe 200 years ago), I'm going to identify more with the Irish side, right? How these things work. Ireland somehow seems accessible, but who knows 16th century Suffolk?
Anyway, Linda's paternal forebears were gentleman farmers, basically landowners and investors in the area that became known as Main Line Philadelphia (Delaware and Chester Counties). Perhaps the Italian family were renting land from the LeBoutilliers when they started their florist and nursery business in the 1930s and 40s. Or maybe the LeBoutillier boy (Roberts, nicknamed "Bo") loved to work with the soil and got himself a nice job with the Paolini enterprise, and then found himself romantically entangled with their slightly older daughter. Incredibly enough, they married when they were 16, and the bride was ever-so-slightly pregnant. I suspect she had eyes on the future and was making a premeditated husband-grab. (In 20 years he'd still be a young man!)
You can surmise their points-of-view. Bo: "Why should I bother finishing high school and going to college, when I can have an important job doing just what I like, with people I like. And be set for life?"
And Zelinda (or Linda as the other Linda's mother was called): "This is stupendous. We will grow the family business, and the family too, with this hearty young man of not quite sixteen summers!" They married shortly after Bo turned 16, in May 1951.
Anyway it was a successful and long-lived marriage, producing five children and an enormously successful family business, centered around their Waterloo Gardens nursery near Devon, PA.
The business thrived until these boutique, family-owned chains were undersold by Lowe's and HomeDepot in the 1990s and later. But that's another story.
No, I'm not judging, and my own husband and I were together (on and off for maybe 26 years before we tied the knot, but it's a bit creepy how the earlier marriages are left out. I mean, she was a sophomore at Bryn Mawr when she did the first one, in her parish church.