Linda Hunter
SLINGERLANDS — Linda Hunter knew how to celebrate. She always remembered her many relatives on special occasions and she loved decorating her home for holidays.
She died unexpectedly on Sunday, March 12, 2017. She was 70.
She and her husband, Theodore “Teddy” Hunter, worked as a team. She would make up the batter for cookies and cakes and breads, and he would put them in the oven for her and take them out. Then they would wrap them up for family members.
Many of the packages were mailed to the South, where her relatives lived, and many were distributed locally where his relatives lived.
Born in Troy on Dec. 15, 1946, Mrs. Hunter was the daughter of the late Maynard Kellam and Katherine (née Buck) Kellam. She grew up on Depot Road where her father ran a garage; her mother was a homemaker.
She graduated from Clayton A. Bouton High School in Voorheesville.
She met Mr. Hunter in 1976, at what he described as “a big party” at the Red Baron in Westerlo. Their meeting was a happy accident. “Me and my friend went past where we were supposed to go and just stopped in at the Red Baron,” Mr. Hunter recalled. “We met and started dating. Next I knew, we were getting maried.”
The couple married in 1977. They would have been married 40 years this July.
They first lived in Mrs. Hunter’s girlhood home on Depot Road. It was built in the 1800s, Mr. Hunter said. His wife loved historic buildings and he fondly recalled a trip they had taken to Williamsburg, Virginia. “It was real nice,” he said.
Mrs. Hunter worked for the University at Albany for 21 years where she headed a maintenance crew. The work, which involved lifting big bins, caused her back problems, her husband said.
“Even with the pain, she kept on walking. The doctors couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Hunter said. “She just kept going.”
She was also hampered by severe allergies, which were made worse after Tropical Storm Irene flooded the Clarksville trailer park where the Hunters had lived for 34 years, causing the growth of mold. In 2015, the Hunters moved to Blackbird Estates in Slingerlands.
Mrs. Hunter regularly watched her favorite soap operas on television — “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful.”
She also enjoyed flowers and, after she was no longer able to garden, would instruct her husband on what to plant where, and what to put in the hanging baskets, he said.
An entire shed at their Clarksville home was devoted to storing her holiday decorations, including special items for Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Christmas. “Every holiday, I’d pick out the right plastic container,” Mr. Hunter said. For Christmas every year, Mrs. Hunter displayed her collection of Father Santa Clauses, Mr. Hunter said.
“She loved her nieces and nephews. She never missed a birthday. She made sure everybody got something for Christmas,” said Mr. Hunter. “She kept all the dates in a book. She’d write in when someone passed away.
“She wrote down all the anniversaries, too. People would get a card and they couldn’t believe it. They would ask, ‘How did she know that?’”
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Linda (née Kellam) Hunter is survived by her husband of 39 years; her son, Howard Cole Jr,. and his wife, Diane; her brother, Walter Kellam, and his wife, Eva; two sisters-in law, Julia Peck, and Starleen Raby and her husband, John; and many nieces and nephews.
Her brother, Maynard “Skippy” Kellam, died before she was born.
A memorial service will be held this summer at a date to be announced. Arrangements are by Meyers Funeral Home in Delmar.