People Laid to Rest — Memorial Area»

Linda Landreth 1943-2026

Linda Landreth, born July 17, 1943, in Broken Bow, Nebraska, passed from this life on June 7, 2026, in Waterford, Virginia, where she had made her home for nearly fifty years.

She and her older brother were raised by their mother and grandparents on the high plateau outside of Merna, Nebraska. The wide landscape of the sand hills left its mark on her: the patience of her listening, the care of her words, a temperament that knew the value of taking time. As a graduating senior, she earned the first Custer County Home Extension Council Scholarship by demonstrating her baking skills before a jury and carried that same conviction to the University of Nebraska, where she studied home economics.

Post-graduation, she lived in Washington, D.C., where she began her career. She worked for the U.S. Postal Service, and later for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where she served as a management analyst until her retirement. During her years in Washington, her sense of justice brought her to the front of many causes. In the late 1970s, she helped found the Mary Valentino Defense Fund to finance the legal costs of a class action suit brought on behalf of female employees of the USPS whose workplace equality protections had been effectively eliminated. In the 1980s, she worked on Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaign and stood on the National Mall to read aloud the names of those lost to AIDS as the quilt was unfurled.

During those Washington years, she met Jack Hagen, a tall, quiet man from Missouri. Together they fulfilled a dream of owning a store. Jack left his position in Washington to run the Waterford Market while Linda continued to work, commuting to help him when she was able. After Jack’s sudden passing in the early 1980s, Linda kept the store running with the assistance of many in the community while she was in Washington. In 1994, she made Waterford her full-time home and the market a fulfillment of her and Jack’s dream; stocking the shelves the way they had planned, greeting customers the way they had imagined.

For those who came through the door of the Waterford Market, Linda could be found in one of three places: down behind the store tending her sheep, behind the counter, or behind her spinning wheel. She carried her knitting everywhere, the basket always at hand, note cards tucked inside with the next series of instructions written out step by step, because every loop builds on the last and no single knot is insignificant. Decades of Waterford life collected in that store, in its corners, on its shelves, and in her. She knew the village the way you know a person and the way a weaver knows the strands in a cloth. Who had lived where, who had left and where they had gone, who had married whom, what had been built, what and whom had been lost, she knew every thread.

After retirement, she continued her love of agriculture and community. She was a host farm for the Temple Hall 4-H Sheep Club, opening her land and her knowledge to children who otherwise might never have had the chance to work with animals. She could be found every day in the sheep barn at the Loudoun County Fair, teaching young people about sheep and fleeces. Knowledge, for Linda, was not something you held onto. It was something you passed on before it could be lost.

She served as president and trustee of the Waterford Union of Churches Cemetery, tending its grounds and its history as faithfully as she tended everything else she loved. She was active in the Waterford Foundation, the Waterford Citizens’ Association, and the Waterford Fair. She helped found the fireworks tradition at the Waterford Fourth of July, back when the town made its own fireworks.

She is preceded in death by her loves Jack Hagen and Abbott Sekaquaptewa, her mother Pauline, her brother Larry, and by the animals who shared her life: a Doberman named Nadia, two Yorkshire terriers, two standard poodles both named Josh, a sheltie-terrier mix named Merlin, Roman crested geese Thelma and Louise, and the angora goats and countless sheep whose names she carried with her.

She is survived by 34 Corriedale and Lincoln sheep including one ram, among them Miss Piggy, Sweet Pea, and Stevie Nicks, a Shih Tzu named Nino, cats Missy and Mrs. Cat, and barn cats Moshi and Smudge. She is also survived by the 4-H children she shaped, the Waterford community she tended, her Nebraska family, her niece Joana and nephew Grant, and the wide circle of people who found, in the Waterford Market and in Linda herself, that being known and cared for is one of the greatest gifts in this world.