Linda Morgan was a highly valued legal secretary for 30 years with two Buckhead law firms, but that was just her Monday-through-Friday career. On weekends she partnered with her husband, raising herbs and specialty vegetables for sale to restaurants and local farmers markets.
Her husband, Jep Morgan, said her regular paycheck enabled the two of them to build their produce business during its early years. She also regularly pitched in at home on weekends, cultivating and weeding, leading visitors on tours of their farm and conducting cooking and gardening classes.
“It turned out to be an idyllic life for an urban couple to go back to the land and make a living by farming,” he said.
Sue Kreitzman, a onetime Atlanta food writer now living in England, said she loved what the Morgans did for Atlanta’s burgeoning food scene in the 1970s and ’80s by providing fresh herbs from their farm.
“Every year we held my birthday bash at their farm,” she said. “Surrounded by aromatic fields of herbs, we would celebrate life, friendship and gorgeous food. Linda’s joie de vivre and her open-armed hospitality helped make each of those yearly events unforgettable. Those were golden days.”
Linda Ann Gilder Morgan, 72, died of cancer April 19 at her home outside Acworth. A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday at Mars Hill Presbyterian Church, Acworth. Woodstock Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Born in the District of Columbia, Morgan moved to Atlanta with her parents and graduated from Druid Hills High School and later from Stetson University. She met her husband on a blind date, and the two were married in 1967. After his return from U.S. Army service in Vietnam, they decided to try specialty farming, first on a property outside Kennesaw, later at their residence outside Acworth.
She began her law office career with Gershon, Olim, Katz & Loeb in 1967. “Linda knew the law and knew how to get things done,” said one of the partners, Barry Katz. “She also knew how to have a good time doing it. She was top-notch.”
John Larkins Jr., a partner at her other employer, Chilivis, Cochran, Larkins & Beyer, said Morgan was “exceptionally capable … a classic secretary even if the name of the job has fallen into disfavor.”
Her co-workers also held her in high regard. “Linda was a stalwart of our staff,” said Donna Jackson of Atlanta. “She was one smart cookie who knew as much about the law as lawyers and judges.”
Fran Dorfman of Roswell concurred, adding, “Linda had the law in her veins. She never took a day off and was very dedicated, and she still had fun.”
Morgan was a 40-year member of Mars Hill Presbyterian, serving as a Sunday school teacher, elder and clerk of session. In the latter capacity, she kept minutes of monthly meetings of the church’s board and did an excellent job of communicating the board’s actions to church members, the Rev. Bryant Harris said.
Carolyn Creager of Cartersville said she met Morgan at the church in 1986 and “we hit it off immediately and became the sisters that neither one of us had while growing up.”
“Linda lived life to the fullest,” Creager added, “and if anyone was down, she would pick them up.”
Morgan had no siblings and no children. Her only immediate survivor was her husband, but he said she considered fellow members of the Mars Hill church to be her family.
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