Born Lynda Ann Sommers, on August 18, 1949 in Hackensack, New Jersey, to parents Ann and Theodore Sommers. Shortly thereafter, the family moved to nearby Fair Lawn, where her brother Kenneth was born. There, she attended public school, and upon graduation from high school, began working a full time job, while attending evening college.
She was employed in an administrative position by the Medical Division of the Hewlett-Packard Company in 1969, when she first met Nick Ballard, an electrical engineer and coworker. They married on New Year’s Eve of 1971, and moved into a tiny apartment in Fort Lee, NJ to begin a marriage that was to last 48 years.
When Nick left HP to found Technology Inc., a medical electronics company, Lynda dropped out of college to manage administrative operations. After some startup difficulties, the business grew and prospered, and they were able to purchase their first home, in Old Tappan, NJ — where they lived for 25 years, and where their son, Dean, was born in 1988.
Dean, like his dad, has Asperger's Syndrome — an interesting disorder that couples an extremely high IQ with extreme social difficulties. Lynda retired from active participation in Technology Inc. to spend all her time with Dean, and those years were some of the happiest of her life.
Lynda always loved vacationing in Massachusetts, and in 1997, she managed to convince Nick and Dean to relocate to the Boston Area to take advantage of the better educational opportunities for special needs children like Dean — so they purchased a home in Lexington.
When Dean entered his teen-years, he preferred to spend time with his school friends, so Lynda needed something interesting and useful to occupy her day. She founded SPEDconsultant.com — a pro-bono advocacy for children with special needs. She worked tirelessly to assist parents in identifying their child's unique needs, and getting appropriate services through the public education system — until cancer finally slowed her down.
In 2014 she was diagnosed with an advanced cancer, and relocated to Woburn to be nearer her treatment center at Lahey Hospital. Then, in 2017, the cancer metastasized and she entered an intense chemotherapy program, which essentially halted the cancer's progress — but in 2019, the side effects forced her to stop chemotherapy. Now unrestrained, the cancer resulted in her death on April 17, 2020. …R.I.P.
In light of the current precautions with the Coronavirus, Funeral Services are private.