Obituary: Lynda Blankinship, 83, of Ludington

Lynda Blankinship

Obituary: Lynda Blankinship, 83, of Ludington

Lynda Joyce Fox Blankinship was born in Thomasville, Tenn. in 1940 and transported to southeast Detroit in the back seat of a Model-T in 1942. She shared the back seat with her paternal grandmother and a dishpan of skinned possum. They were a departure gift to her grandmother from the cousins. Once established in the wartime economy of Detroit the family purchased a house in southwest Detroit and regularly made summer visits to Thomasville, Tenn.

Joyce, as she is still known to the family, navigated the Detroit school system through high school. Having recently found religion she went on to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Ill. At the end of two years, she told her mentors that the Lord had revealed that she should return to Detroit and pursue a college degree in fine arts. Arriving home her father made it clear that he didn’t care what the Lord had told her, she wasn’t going to go to college on his dime to be an artist. She needed an income producing career and a job. Joyce enrolled as a part-time student at Henry Ford Community College and Wayne State University, planning to be a teacher. She went to work full-time for Detroit Parks and Recreation as a play leader.

Lynda Joyce met her husband, Joseph Blankinship, while working at Parks and Recreation. They were married in 1963. Joe and Lynda had four children, Scott, Regan, Bo and Rachel, in four years. Lynda stayed home to care for her children. In 1969 they moved to the City of Detroit’s camp on Euler Lake between Brighton and Howell. Besides raising her children Lynda bred and showed champion Bull Mastiffs. During summers she tended the petting zoo that was part of the camp experience for the children from Detroit.

When Rachel started school, Lynda returned to Henry Ford Community College for the nursing program. She went to work at McPherson Hospital in Howell. She worked in the Med-Surg unit, becoming the head nurse. Joe and she retired to Ludington in 1986 where she continued her nursing career in home health care.

In Ludington she began to paint seriously. She apprenticed herself to two watercolor artists and began developing her unique style. Her first solo exhibit of Civil War portraits was at West Shore Community College. She joined the gallery, Art On the Town, now in Pentwater. The Red Door Gallery, Maude’s, and the AM Gallery in Ludington exhibited her works over the years. Her work appeared in juried shows in Holland, Grand Haven, multiple times at the Muskegon Museum of Art and in Manistee. The Ludington Area Center for the Arts staged a retrospective exhibit of her work in 2018.

She is survived by daughters, Regan and Rachel (Curt); six grandchildren, David, Devon, Adam, Bethany, Andrea and Olivia; one great-granddaughter, Karaline; and her partner, John.