“After enrolling in Hospice care, my biggest concern was for my family – my husband, Paul, my adult children, and my twin granddaughters. How can I help prepare them to deal with their grief when I pass?
The answer was wind phones.
In the past few months, wind phones have become a family project as we openly talk about death and dying, and how people can and do stay connected to those they've loved and lost.”
– Lynda Shannon Bluestein
A life of advocacy, adventure, and unwavering compassion
April 26, 1947 – January 4th, 2024
Lynda Shannon Bluestein, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, was born in West Texas and grew up in sunny southern California in the 1950s. After graduating from nursing school, she joined the war on poverty in Oklahoma and Kentucky as a VISTA volunteer. Eventually, she went back to school to earn her MPH from UCLA, leading to a career as a healthcare executive.
Lynda was a world traveler, always up for an adventure. A singer in four choirs as well as a musician, writer, and accomplished bridge player, she was also a tireless community volunteer and organizer: she was the co-founder of The Connecticut Coalition Against Gun Violence and the Silent March on Washington. Lynda was well-known for her wit, eloquence, creative energy, intellect, style, and lifelong activism. (Her license plate was ACTVST.)
She and her husband enjoyed the theater and music, seeing more than a thousand plays and hundreds of concerts together. She was a Unitarian Universalist and held board positions with both the national Unitarian Universalist Association and the Unitarian Church in Westport. She was a friend to everyone she met and her loyalty, generosity, and compassion were boundless.
In her seventies, Lynda, who had terminal cancer, became an outspoken advocate for Medical Aid in Dying, which was unavailable to people in Connecticut despite more than 25 years of legislative proposals. In 2023, with support from Compassion & Choices, she successfully sued the State of Vermont to remove the residency requirement for terminally ill out-of-state patients seeking medical-aid-in-dying. Her story was covered by the New York Times, the Associated Press, the Boston Globe, and many other news outlets.
She was honored by the Completed Life Initiative with their inaugural Pioneer Award and named a Hero of the Movement by Compassion & Choices. Her final project was the installation of the first wind phone in Fairfield County, followed by other installations in Connecticut and New Jersey, including the first wind phone in the world specifically intended for use by children. Her interview with Connecticut Public Radio about her wind phone projects was the most listened-to broadcast of 2023.
With the aid of prescribed medications, on January 4, 2024, Lynda died on her own terms, surrounded by family. A film documenting her journey accessing Medical Aid in Dying was released by Death Differently at SXSW in March 2025.
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