Linda Therese Conroy

Obituary For Linda Therese Conroy

With great sadness, we announce that Linda Therese Conroy passed through the thin veil on February 28 to join her beloved, Don Conroy. The cause of her passing was cancer.

Born in 1948 in Fresno, California, Linda grew up as one of nine King siblings. From a young age, she was a caregiver, helping raise her younger brothers and sister.

She attended the College of the Holy Names in Oakland, where she met the love of her life, Don Conroy, at a mixer. They would marry and spend several years moving between graduate schools and academic appointments in Santa Barbara and Princeton before landing in Annapolis, Maryland. Along the way, they had a son, Peter.

In Annapolis, Linda opened the Severn Grove Road Pre-School, creating a community of parents and students she would stay close with throughout her life. In 1988, the family moved to the town of Harrogate in the north of England. It was the start of years of adventure, hiking through the Yorkshire Dales and Swiss Alps, taking endless photographs of sheep, rehoming rocks from across Europe, and bringing a uniquely American volume to the community of St. Aelred’s Catholic Church.

In 2008, she and Don settled in Bellingham. For years, she’d dreamed of opening a new kind of spiritual center, where people of all faiths could find peace, reflect, and explore the mystery of being.

Guided by that vision, she and Don began the decades-long project of turning their home into Stillpoint at Beckside. Transforming a swampy field into a place of extraordinary natural beauty and reflection – and creating what many experts agree is the best labyrinth inspired by Chartres Cathedral in Whatcom County – was itself an incredible accomplishment. But it was the project of connecting the hundreds of people who would come for events and creating a truly special community that was her life’s work and one of her proudest accomplishments.

When she was first diagnosed with Stage IV cancer in 2023, she was determined that the work of Stillpoint must continue. The connection must continue. To anyone who knew her, this was no surprise because of how deeply she loved. She loved her family. She loved her friends. She loved the Stillpoint community. She loved laughter and the mystery of creation. Her love, her joy, and her wonder were beyond infectious. She had a light and the more she shared it, the brighter it grew.

Linda’s life was in many ways an answer to the question posed by her favorite poet, Mary Oliver: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Her answer was simple: Connect. Give. Love.

She is preceded in passing by her parents, Lynn and Mary, her husband, Don Conroy, and siblings, James and Jeanne. She is survived by her son and daughter in law, Peter Conroy and Lisa Mallory, her grandchildren, Emma and Micah, and her siblings, Marilyn, George, Margaret, Tim, John, Thomas, and Gary.

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