Making A Difference: An Occasional Series Profiling North Idaho’S Community Leaders Dedication And Then Some Despite Her Illness, Linda Seed Puts Her Heart And Soul Into Making Post Falls A Better Place

The telephone at Linda Seed’s house rings four or five times an hour.

School secretaries depend on Seed to tell them where to find the best deal on 375 rolls of LifeSavers for Teacher Appreciation Week.

People pull into Seed’s driveway, drag heavy items - furniture? yard equipment? - over her concrete and drive away while she putters inside her house unconcerned.

“Little League concession stands,” she says, noticing a visitor’s curiosity. “That’s my life. I like to feel connected.”

Seed is as connected as a multi-socket extension cord. The Andrew Rypien Memorial Softball Tournament is lost without her. She’s the heartbeat in Post Falls’ Youth First. Her organizational skills strengthen Little League. The Post Falls Middle School PTA would need five people to replace her.

“When she puts her mind to something, she puts 120 percent into it,” says Lance Bridges, Rathdrum’s parks director. He was parks director for Post Falls when he met Linda eight years ago. “She’s one of those highly dedicated people who knows how to move things forward in a positive way.”

Seed, 48, was the bud of the Post Falls youth movement. Parents had worried for years that kids didn’t have enough to do. Seed united the voices.

“We got frustrated because our kids didn’t have places to play their sports. They were playing in cow pastures,” says Vicki Caughran, another energetic parent volunteer.

Caughran was PTA president when Seed exploded into the community service scene.

“She kept volunteering to help,” Caughran says. “I thought, `I have a live one here.”’ Conversations among parents and at home in 1997 told Seed that families wanted the city to shift its emphasis from business growth to youth activities.

“We were growing by leaps and bounds,” she says. “We needed ballfields.”

Seed and Caughran organized interested people into the nonprofit Youth First. The group drew attention by marching in parades, washing cars for donations and lobbying city officials for play areas.

It opened a youth center in August 1998 in the city’s old post office. The center had video games, pool tables and space to study and dance. A loading dock in the back entertained skateboarders. Youth First even threw a few weekend concerts before neighbor complaints and a few misbehaving kids closed it down. It lasted six months.

“A lot of work and dreams went into it,” Seed says. “Before things got out of hand, we decided to close.”

By then, Seed had organized the Andrew Rypien Memorial Softball Tournament to raise money for the center and for Post Falls Little League. Last year, 45 teams played in the tournament. It raised $6,500 toward new ballfields.

“She knows how to make her beliefs become reality,” Bridges says.

Such energy is admirable in anyone, but it’s particularly praiseworthy in Seed. She’s fought leukemia and lymphoma - cancer of the blood and the lymph nodes - for eight years. She blames her cancer on the atomic testing in Nevada during her childhood in Southern California. She’s a downwinder, but she refuses to let cancer hold her down.

“It humbles you, puts your priorities in order,” she says, glancing at photos of her 15-year-old daughter, Melissa, and her 12-year-old son, D.J. “I think that’s why I’m so driven.”

Every month, chemotherapy knocks her out of commission for a week. She doesn’t return to her busy schedule until she’s in top form.

“As soon as she starts feeling better, you know,” Caughran says. “She has all these great ideas again.”

Cancer has influenced Seed’s activities. She helped throw benefits for a Post Falls boy with a brain tumor and for a man with leukemia. She hopes to participate in the Make-A-Wish Foundation when it opens a North Idaho chapter in the future.

She finds time for everything by meticulous organizing. A thick binder holds paperwork from all her activities. It goes everywhere with her.

She joined the city’s park board in January, not long after she wooed Art on the Edge to town. The program offers free weekly art classes to kids after school. How could Seed resist?

When she’s not organizing, she’s cheering for D.J. in junior tackle football and soccer or Melissa in Post Falls High freshman softball or her husband, Don in adult softball.

“Her enthusiasm and passion for this community are something I wish we could duplicate,” says Kerri Thoreson, Post Falls Chamber of Commerce director. “She’s one of our very special resources here.”