Necrology
Linda Susan Mensch K'73
Mar. 12, 1951-Aug. 26, 2021
Linda Susan Mensch K’73 died on Aug. 26, 2021, a victim of a hit-and-run accident, in the East Garfield Park neighborhood of Chicago.
Born in Jericho, N.Y., on March 12, 1951, Linda came to Kirkland from Syosset High School in Syosset, N.Y. Some of her activities in high school foreshadowed her strong sense of social justice and community engagement. She was president of the high school’s Peace Corps Club, treasurer of the International Relations Club, and chair of a fund drive to help the people of Biafra during its attempt to separate itself from Nigeria. She was also a member of the Honor Society.
At Kirkland, she majored in literature, but during the course of her studies, Linda began to develop intellectually in a direction that ultimately led her to her lifelong profession: the law. In a letter of recommendation for law school, Kirkland President Samuel Babbitt wrote her “most obvious qualification is her great intelligence and the ability to make it work,” noting as well that the faculty praised her “highly developed insights into literary and philosophical materials” such that “she can marshal arguments informed by both the force of their presentation as well as the force of their substantive worth.”
Following graduation, she went to New York University’s Law School where, based on her then-current interest in, as she put it, “the rock and theater scenes” in New York City, she was drawn to entertainment law. At the same time, she was volunteering her legal services to a landlord-tenant clinic in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn to push back against landlords trying to evict tenants for non-payment of rent. Concurrently, she began work for the law firm of Snadowsky & Fox, where she got her introduction to the practicalities of entertainment law even as she handled all manner of legal work, including writing complaints, contracts, and briefs, while dealing with both clients and opposing counsel.
Having earned her Juris Doctor degree in 1976, she married Michael G. Heyman the following year. They would subsequently move to Chicago where she joined the law firm of Katten, Muchin, Zavis, Pearl, and Galler, and he joined the faculty of what is now the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law. Later she would move to the firm of Leavens, Strand, and Glover, LLC Entertainment — it would merge with Mandell Menkes LLC and assume that name in 2019 — and establish her own law firm on the side. She concentrated on entertainment law, working with professionals in a variety of media including music, film, digital media, gaming, and start-up technologies in cyberspace. A colleague described her in a published obituary on the CBS Chicago website as a “Chicago warrior for the arts — musicians, writers, authors, filmmakers — and a fierce advocate for artists’ rights.” She served first as vice president then as president of the Chicago Recording Academy during the 1990s.
Concurrently, picking up the thread of her work with tenants in New York, she collaborated in the creation of the “Music Revolution to End Homelessness” in support of A Safe Haven (ASH), a social service organization established in Chicago in 1994 to confront the issue of homelessness.
The co-founder of ASH, Neli Vazques Rowland, described Linda as follows in ASH’s statement about her death on its website: “Linda S. Mensch was an amazing life force in her professional career as an award-winning lawyer in the music and film industry. She was also an amazing, dedicated board member of A Safe Haven and champion for the cause of helping the homeless for more than 12 years. As a friend, she has touched the lives of thousands of people from all walks of life, and she was beloved by all. … Her legacy will truly live on in the hearts and minds of all of us who knew her and were inspired by her intelligence, compassion, kindness, humor, and joy.”
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the Yiddish word “mensch” describes a person of integrity and honor. Clearly, Linda was the personification of those qualities.
Linda S. Mensch is survived by her husband and daughter.
