A career COP I tend to be apprehensive of people when I first meet them; they’re all suspects until proven otherwise. While I jest (mostly) that is a topic best suited for another day.
Ms. Linda with my Daughter Nectaria after a Christmas Recital.
Every now and then you meet someone whose soul shines through, and you know you are in the presence of goodness. If you are in any way spiritual you will understand that to mean that goodness is more than the opposite of badness, rather it is the essence of God’s nature.
My daughter Nectaria’s Violin teacher, since she was seven or eight was one such person. Ms. Linda to all her students, Linda Boivin was a masterful violinist and a member of the New Mexico Philarmonic as well as The Santa Fe Symphony among other career highlights. Ms. Linda passed away last week after a decade long battle with Breast Cancer, something she believed she had beaten only to have it return.
Whether it was remodeling her historic home in Nob Hill, tending her garden, planning recitals for her students or performing in them she went about those things with passion and purpose, even when she wasn’t feeling well; teaching lessons at her home studio up until a few weeks before her passing.
An avid and expert skier I would see Ms. Linda along with her husband Dan at Ski Santa Fe every Friday, that was their skiing day. When I last spoke with her earlier this spring at the ski area she even thought that she might take on a part-time Instructors position with the Ski Santa Fe Snowsports School for the upcoming 2019/2020 season. She always looked forward.
My wife, Angela Kurth PharmD, developed a special kinship with Ms. Linda as she too is a Breast Cancer Survivor who as a Doctor of Pharmacy spoke with her often on current and experimental therapies. While I did not know Ms. Linda as well as either my wife or especially my daughter I could not help but feel a kinship of sorts. There was the skiing that we always talked about to be sure but there was something else as well.
My Grandfather, William Herman Kurth, was also a violin teacher, and his father, William A. Kurth was a violinist with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and a violin maker. Few other musicians played as well as my grandfather, Ms. Linda was one of those. I’ve only known one other Linda in my life and she too was the personification of goodness and patience. A farm girl who baked and cooked virtually everything from scratch she was my Grandmother.
Sometimes people that we only know tangentially connect us with our past and sometimes they remind us of the basic goodness that is humanity and sometimes they play music like an angel and sometimes they guide others to do the same; Ms. Linda was all of those things.
Ms. Linda, May 14, 1958-June 15, 2019 was a gentle teacher who brought out the inner musician of Necataria, whose Grand Father, Great-Grandfather, and Great-Great-Grandfather would be so proud, as am I.
High Desert Writer 
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