Linda is married to John Thornton and they have 3 children: Evelyn, Lucas, and Suzanna.
My husband has an honors degree from Princeton and a law degree from W & L. He’s never practiced law. [His father’s death at age 50] had a huge impact on John in terms of not wanting to put his life on hold. And he had always wanted to be a farmer and [it] seemed cool to me, so that’s what we did. And we really thought that was a great way to raise children, because they all knew where their father was, they knew what he did. He was pretty hands-on. The best thing about it really was they all had a sense of purpose in terms of the family enterprise. And they all worked from the time they were quite young. We paid them handsomely so they would think it was okay to do that.
We did it because we loved it. Clearly it was not an economically wise choice, but we did it because we wanted to, and we loved it, and we didn’t ever want the kids to feel oppressed. We knew they weren’t ever going to be farmers; it was getting worse everyday we were in farming in terms of what family farm meant, what it could do, what it was. So we would never advocate that they did that. But we wanted them to love the country and to love nature. [And] I think we were successful in that because they see home as a retreat center.
Oldest daughter:
Evelyn is in DC. She works for an NGO called Women for Inclusive Security, it’s nickname is Women Reaching Peace. The particular project she has been working on is with women in Sudan.
Middle Child, only son:
Lucas was an Echols scholar at UVA and graduated as a philosopher. And he had a double major in Philosophy and Social and Political Thought. He is a project manager [for] the Grand building downtown that’s being redone.
Youngest daughter:
Susanna is the language student. She’s attends Mary Washington. She spent last semester in China and this semester she’s in Madrid. She’s an Asian studies, or Chinese and Spanish major. She is hoping to be able to go back to Beijing after she graduates to take people that don’t speak Chinese to the [Olympic] games.
Linda participated in an earlier program with Hollins about farming. To see more of that interview, please visit: http://www1.hollins.edu/classes/anthlife/majidb/homepage.htm