Linda Kathryn Braucher

Linda Kathryn Braucher, 76, of Liberty Center, Ohio passed away on August 19, 2025 in Maumee, Ohio after an extended illness. Linda was born on February 16, 1949 in Cary, North Carolina to Jackson and Charlotte (Billipp) Frantz. Linda’s father was a civil engineer whose post-war highway building projects moved their family around North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Maryland before settling in Towson, Maryland. She claimed Beaver, Pennsylvania as her favorite town thanks both to a cute boy named Jimmy and that her family lived in a brand-new house with central air conditioning which was uncommon at the time. As a child, she loved spending time with both her “Country Grandma” and her “City Grandma.” Country Grandma Ruth Frantz lived in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania where Linda spent many weekends and summers with the extended family in their country cottage near Bucknell University where her grandfather was the Chair of the Chemistry Department. City Grandma Charlotte Bramley lived in New York City where Linda experienced the 1964 World’s Fair, explored the city with her sister, and attended Broadway plays and musicals. As a teenager in Maryland, Linda canvassed for 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and lost her voice screaming at a Beatles concert at the Baltimore Civic Center on their historic 1964 tour. She also traveled to Hollywood to visit her uncle (William Bramley, a film and television actor) where she met and received personal signed photos from Leonard Nimoy and Peter Tork, much to the envy of all her classmates at home. Linda graduated from the Arnold Constable Charm School in March 1964. City Grandma took her on a life-changing ocean liner trip at 16 years old to Europe aboard the SS France. Linda was fascinated by the wide variety of unique styles of toilet paper from each country she visited and came home with quite a selection of carefully folded and archived foreign toilet tissues. Later in life, she would present the collection to local groups who heard about it. If you knew Linda’s sense of humor, this should ring especially true to her fun-loving and curious nature. After graduating from Towson High School in 1967, Linda moved to Ohio to attend Wilmington College. There, she met her future husband, Isaac Braucher. She was the epitome of a flower child and married during the Summer of Love in June 1969. Upon marrying, Linda fulfilled her lifelong dream of living in the country to bake pies and raise children when the couple moved to Isaac’s hometown, Liberty Center. She graduated from Bowling Green State University in 1971 with a bachelor’s degree in education and went on to earn a master’s in library science after giving birth to her first daughter. She loved her first job as a Head Start teacher in Malinta, Ohio where she taught local children as well as Spanish-speaking children of migrant workers in the area. She used her first paychecks to buy a beloved 1972 gold Chevy Nova. Linda was immensely proud to be a mother to her three daughters, of which she used that library science degree to name in alphabetical order. She happily attended countless marching band performances, choir and band concerts, track meets, art shows, endless softball games, and musical theater productions. She volunteered hours of her time attending Band and Athletic Booster meetings and fundraisers. She always said yes to hosting sleepovers, impromptu pool parties, and even allowed packs of kids to romp around the back room and parking lot of the Village Pantry. She only got mad once—when her daughters turned the entire upstairs into a haunted house for their friends and accidentally filled the bathroom sink’s pipes with tangled yarn in an attempt at DIY special effects. Linda dedicated her life to community service and instilled her devotion to helping the less fortunate in her daughters. When the Braucher family began operating the Village Pantry in 1976, she paid for milk and bread for town children who came in with pennies and nickels they had clearly scraped together out of desperation. She let out-of-work parents get a few dollars of gas to get to a job interview, and bagged up free ready-to-eat meals for hungry families who came in to “just look” at the grocery aisle in the store. She was a lifelong Girl Scout—she earned her Gold Award in Towson as a teenager and served throughout her adult life in Liberty Center as a troop leader, service unit leader, and regional cookie coordinator, as well as organizing and leading annual day camp weeks at Camp Libbey. She volunteered for the Salvation Army, served on the Liberty Center Library Board, and was a poll worker and trainer for the Henry County Board of Elections for decades. She was a dedicated member of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Liberty Center where she taught Sunday school and catechism, organized vacation bible school, tutored children from the congregation in algebra and math, and participated in the vocal and bell choirs. Upon the Braucher girls’ graduations from LCHS, Linda returned to library and community service by working until she retired in April 2014 as the Media Librarian at Napoleon Public Library. Linda loved playing cards and board games and could beat anyone in the room at Trivial Pursuit. She even organized community trivia tournaments at the Liberty Center VFW in the 1980s. She completed the daily crossword puzzles in three local newspapers in pen and (almost) never made a mistake. She loved crafting to the point that her bedroom would be filled with boxes of empty Altoids mint tins, buttons, pipe cleaners, construction paper, and other hidden treasures waiting to be turned into her latest project. She also excelled at ceramics and was highly skilled in sewing. Her daughters loved falling asleep to the sound of the sewing machine in the next room while Linda made Halloween costumes, Easter dresses, clothing for her out-of-state family, and countless obnoxious 1980s printed shorts. She loved reading, cats, sampling the new candy from the travelling salesman for the Village Pantry, any kind of strangely flavored potato chips, all manner of spicy mustards, and cheeseburger subs. Every summer she would drive all three girls to Maryland—singing camp songs in the car all the way to Towson and back—to visit her family, tour museums, attend Baltimore Orioles games, eat crab cakes, and shop at the National Harborplace mall and food court. Her melodic voice will be greatly missed. In addition to her parents, Linda was preceded in death by her sister, Susan Winters, formerly of Richmond, Indiana. She is survived by her daughters, Alice (Edward) Magdziak of Bloomfield, New Jersey, Amanda (James) Kantner of Maumee, Ohio, and Anne (Aurelio) Kamosso of Newnan, Georgia; her nieces and nephew, Debra, Daniel, and Samantha; and granddaughters, Amber, Eris, and Aurora. Friends and family are invited to attend a funeral service on Tuesday September 2, 2025 at Rodenberger-Gray Funeral Home in Napoleon, Ohio. Visitation will be held from 10 AM until the time of services at 12:00 noon. In remembrance of Linda’s life, the family asks that charitable donations be made to the Henry County Humane Society, Advocates for Ohio’s Future (AOF), or the Girls Scouts of Northwest Ohio. Her family would like to express their deep gratitude to the nurses and social work staff at Addison Heights Health and Rehab and Care 360 Hospice for their compassionate care. Her daughters’ conversations with staff members showed that they clearly knew Linda for the sassy and smart lady that she was

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Linda Kathryn Braucher

February 16, 1949 - August 19, 2025