Lynn Love Heins

Life Story Summary: Lynn Heins was creative, funny, and kind. She treasured her independence and strived to overcome adversity and support herself and her children in ways that defied gender norms and empowered others. Then she spent the second half of her life enjoying what she called a well-deserved rest after all that work.

Growing Up: Lynn grew up in Minnesota, the only girl among six brothers in the 1950s, where she learned the roles expected of women in that era and decided to reject them. She delighted in defying gender norms and scandalized her elders by becoming a hippie and using unladylike torches and hammers to work metal to support herself as a silversmith - though she also took great joy in things like cooking and learning to sew her own clothes, skills she continued to draw on throughout her life.

Family Life: Lynn married her highschool sweetheart, Glen Heins, who went off to fight in the Vietnam War and came back to join her on the road with her jewelry work; they had a son, Gannon, together, were active in the Baháʼí Faith, and lived for a time in a hippie commune, before Lynn went her own way with Gannon. She spent time in the Florida Keys and Miami, and back in Minnesota, where she was married for a time to Robert Shedd, who was a wonderful second father to Gannon. In the artist scene in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Lynn met Dale Moore, a goldsmith, with whom she had two more children, Anthony Moore and Ari Moore (now Ari Evergreen). She then spent several years as part of the vibrant lesbian community in Northampton, Massachusetts. In 2005 Gannon passed away, a loss that Lynn never really recovered from. In 2010 she moved to Ithaca, New York, to be near her son Ari and his partner Shira, as they started a family of their own. In the later years of her life at beautiful downtown senior apartment building McGraw House, Lynn enjoyed spending time with her son Anthony, who had also moved to Ithaca, her beloved dog Sammy, and her granddaughters, Lion and Keshet.

Career: Lynn wore many hats in her working life. She was happiest when self employed, from her barefoot days at hippie festivals selling her hand-crafted jewelry, to her weeks on the road selling it to galleries so she could go back to the commune to make more, to her transition to watercolor painting, to her later years styling and selling vintage clothing on eBay. For some time in the 1980s and '90s, she worked as a building manager for historic Thornes Marketplace in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she wrangled contractors, ran a security team, and applied her artistic abilities (and distinctive handwriting) to the building's signage and holiday decorating.

Passions and Hobbies: In addition to drawing and painting, sewing and cooking, Lynn was incredibly handy with power tools and housepaint, customizing her various apartments with a 1950s flair, and building furniture to her liking. She read books about dreams and our place in the stars and had an open-minded sense of wonder about the world, the cosmos, and the meaning of it all. She adored animals, from the many pets she had over the years, to the wildlife outside her door and even the occasional mouse or other adorable interloper. She nurtured plants, taught her children to value and care for things from books to vintage dishes to handicrafts, and was welcoming and generous with her kids' friends as well as her own employees in her management days. She inherited from her dad and passed on to her kids a sweet silliness, cracking up when they discovered the potatoes she'd put in their pockets and delighting in choosing just the right picture books for her grandchildren. In short, though she was fiercely independent when it came to her romantic life, and joked that she was so prickly she was like a cactus, her kindness and good will extended to everything and everybody around her in a way that was contagious.

Death: Lynn passed away peacefully at Hospicare in Ithaca, New York, after suffering renal failure due to polycystic kidney disease. Lansing Funeral Home arranged her burial at Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve. The informal service was attended by family and friends, who shared their thoughts and laid flowers and evergreen branches with her in the earth. This year a Serviceberry tree will be planted over her grave, since she requested a tree for birds to visit.