Linda Saunders Pence

Linda Pence died May 3, 2018, in Scarborough after orchestrating a loving goodbye with three generations of family. She was a few months shy of her 80th birthday.Born Linda Marilyn Saunders on September 3, 1938, to Clifford Saunders (originally of West Yorkshire, England) and Lillian Marsh (born in Barnstead, New Hampshire), she grew up on Kilby Street in Sanford, attending Edison, Emerson, and Sanford High schools. As a girl with two older brothers and one younger brother, Linda was an avid reader, and words and books brought her much pleasure throughout her life. Even as a youth, she was a gifted, fierce Scrabble player.As a freshman at Sanford High, Linda began dating David Pence, and in 1957 they married and built a simple house in a wooded neighborhood of Springvale. She gave birth to her son, David Jr, in 1959, and to her daughter, Jane, in 1963, and she focused on raising her children with her husband as he pursued a successful business career in town as owner of The Insurance Office.Linda created a world apart on the family's property on Turner Street-including wonderful gardens and charming, cozy interior spaces with fine art on the walls. Above all she loved reading; planting and tending flowers, bushes, trees, and vegetables outdoors; and reimagining a simple four-room ranch house into something akin to an English country cottage. With great creativity and taste, Linda collaborated with gifted carpenters to redesign the house. Her vision for how to shape and decorate spaces in the home became a tangible extension of her identity as a loving mother.In 1976, after the better part of two decades spent raising her children, Linda opened The Upper Story Bookshop in Springvale. She took great pride and pleasure in providing good books and art supplies to customers and their children for about twenty years. Linda had a deeply rooted moral and ethical belief system and a keen political sensibility. She was notably forward-thinking, and she had a strong positive influence on many people as she engaged issues involving social and political justice.After selling the bookstore, she spent many years happily digging in the garden dirt; crafting beautiful, personalized birthday cards for each family member with paper, ink, and glue in her beloved studio; cheering on her grandchildren at sporting and musical events; and making numerous road trips to visit family in Chicago and New York. On these trips, Linda and David enjoyed going to art museums and tracking down buildings designed by favorite architects, especially Frank Lloyd Wright. Though she never realized her desire to see the English gardens, houses, and villages relating to Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group, Linda brought those beautiful and fascinating places into her own home in the form of lavishly illustrated books, pieces of artwork, and her own interior design style. There in the Turner Street house-on the rug in front of the fireplace, at the kitchen counter, at the dining room table, and on the screened porch-Linda spent countless hours with her children, their spouses, and all of the grandchildren laughing, watching the Red Sox, playing rummy, and enjoying the splendor of the surrounding woods and the sky.She is survived by her husband, David L. Pence of Springvale; a brother, James Saunders, and his wife, Aline, of Kennebunk; a son, David Jr, and his wife, Moira Driscoll, of Portland; a daughter, Jane, and her husband, Doug Masters, of Evanston, Illinois; four grandchildren-Julia Masters, Adam Masters, Owen Pence, and Mabel Pence; and many nieces and nephews.The family is grateful to the wonderful medical professionals who helped Linda (and us) during the last days of her life, including Dr. Nathan Wilson, Dr. Sandeep Reddy, Dr. John Nadeau, April S., Dr. Jessica Stevens, Dr. Rebecca Kowaloff, and many others at Southern Maine Health Care in Biddeford; Dr. Devon Evans of New England Cancer Specialists; and Lisa P., Mary G., Brittany H., Brian R., Emily D., Terry C., John L., Sherry P., Haley D., and many others at Gosnell Memorial Hospice House in Scarborough.Donations can be made to the Hospice of Southern Maine or to Save the Children.