Peoples Gas executive and Yough River bike trail champion
With a strategic eye toward the future, James T. “Dutch” Linaberger served for 37 years at Peoples Natural Gas, where, as assistant to the president, he was charged with managing the company’s charitable contributions, along with other duties.
And when it came time to call on all of those government officials, corporate executives, and community contacts that he’d cultivated over the years for help with completing the Great Allegheny Passage rails-to-trails system, they didn’t disappoint.
“Jim Linaberger was a major contributor to the funding success of the 43mile segment of the Yough River Trail North as part of the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) because of his extensive experience in business and philanthropy,” reads a 2018 history of the GAP, a 150-mile trail from Downtown Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Md. An additional 184 miles extends along the C&O Canal Towpath to Washington, D.C.
With his experience as chief lobbyist for Peoples in Western Pennsylvania, Mr. Linaberger steered the project through the complicated and very political grant process, according to the history, compiled by the GAP.
Mr. Linaberger, of Franklin Park, died June 13 after a series of health setbacks. He was 84.
Born in Amwell, Washington County, as the son of a Methodist minister, Mr. Linaberger learned early on how to make friends.
“I think it became necessary for him to know how to talk to different people, because they moved a lot for his father’s job,” Anne Linaberger, of Ross, said of her father, who attended three different grade schools and two high schools.
After graduating from Beaver Falls High School, Mr. Linaberger found a home at Allegheny College in Meadville. The college, where he served as senior class president, would play a very personal role in his future: He was a classmate with his two future wives, Elsa Held and Sandi Kenyon Smith, who was married to Bill Smith, also an Allegheny student during the same time period.
In 1961, Mr. Linaberger married Elsa Held, with whom he raised three daughters.
“We don’t think they all knew each other at the time, but Sandi and our mother were sorority sisters,” his daughter said. “Bill Smith and our mother died within a few months of each other in 2002. Our dad and Sandi were introduced to each other at an Allegheny event the next year and were married for 17 years. The fact that all four of them were there together — who would ever think that something like that would happen?”
Sandi Kenyon Smith Linaberger died in January.
After graduating in 1959 with a history degree, Mr. Linaberger maintained ties to the college. He and his second wife stayed involved in volunteering and made a major donation to help to fund a multimillion-dollar renovation of its oldest building, Bentley Hall.
“Jim was ‘Mr. Allegheny,’” said Sally Barrett, Allegheny’s director of alumni engagement. He was a college trustee from 1981 to 1989 and, along with Sandi, was honored with the college’s Alumni Medal in 2018.
Shortly after college, Mr. Linaberger started as a salesman at Peoples and eventually rose to the executive ranks.
Before retiring, his daughter said, he was a “loaned executive” to the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, helping to establish the Southwestern Pennsylvania Growth Alliance.
As an outdoor enthusiast and avid bicyclist, the Yough River Trail North project — a rails-to-trails segment that connects Elizabeth Townshipto Connellsville — caught Mr. Linaberger’s eye early on in its development. In 1994, he joined the Regional Trail Corp. board, along with Linda M. Boxx, chair of the Katherine Mabis McKenna Foundation. “We were quickly paired up to be the fundraising team,” Ms. Boxx recalled. “We were the one-two punch — He was smooth, calm and congenial, then I came in, and I had already built trails before, so I worked on the more technical side of things.” Along with his daughter Anne, Mr. Linaberger is survived by daughters Mara and Elizabeth Linaberger; stepchildren William Smith Jr., Tracey Armitage and Nicole Manning; a sister, Mara Watson; and two grandsons and six step-grandchildren. A celebration of life will be held at 11 a.m. July 23 at Ingomar United Methodist in Church Franklin Park.