Linda Shen
December 8, 1946 – June 20, 2026
Linda Shen passed away on June 20, 2026 of complications from Alzheimer's disease. She was 78 years old. A piano teacher, choir director, woman of faith, and devoted family member, she spent more than five decades in Andover building a life defined by music, community, and quiet generosity.
Linda was born on December 8, 1946, in Nanking, China, to Xiehua Fan and Liying Wang and spent her childhood in Taipei, Taiwan. She graduated from the Taiwan Academy of Art in 1968 with a major in Clarinet and Piano, and performed with the Taipei Symphony Orchestra before coming to the United States in 1971. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Music Education from the University of Rhode Island in 1974, moved to Andover that same year, and never left.
For over forty years, Linda taught piano to students across Andover and the greater Boston area. Over the course of her career, she taught thousands of children, approaching each one with genuine warmth and patience. She had a gift for making lessons feel like something to look forward to, and she stayed deeply involved in local music education organizations, festivals, and competitions throughout her teaching life.
Her own children, Andrew and Gloria, have their own memories of her time as a piano teacher. Specifically, of being awakened on early Saturday mornings as a steady stream of beginners worked their way through the stages of their assigned pieces. They are the first to say that what their mother gave her students was something real and lasting. The clearest example of that came at the end of her teaching career, when some of her students continued to show up even after the lessons had ended. By then, their time together was no longer about teaching, but about giving Linda the chance to continue doing something that had been such an important part of her life for so many years. That her students chose to keep coming back, and be generous with their time, said a great deal about the relationship she had built with them.
Music was also central to Linda's faith. She had been a member of the Chinese Bible Church of Greater Lowell since its founding, and served the congregation for many years as its pianist and Choir Director. For Linda, music and faith were never really separate. Both were ways of being present for the people around her.
Alzheimer's disease shaped the last ten years of Linda's life in ways that were difficult for everyone who loved her. Even as the illness progressed, music stayed with her through familiar songs still present in her hands and her memory long after other things had faded.
Those years also gave her family something unexpected. Verbal expressions of love and overt gestures of affection were not especially commonplace in the Shen household. Love was present but it tended to express itself through provision, through sacrifice, and by simply being fully present. What Linda’s husband T.Y. did during those ten years was entirely in keeping with that tradition, and yet it made visible something that might otherwise have remained unspoken. He was present, consistent, and gentle. He was attentive to her needs, steady in his care, and unfailing in his tenderness toward her even on the hardest days. There were no grand declarations, only the accumulation of small, faithful acts repeated without complaint across months and years. For Andrew and Gloria, watching their father care for their mother was its own kind of revelation, a window into what their parents' love had always been, and a clear picture of what deep and lasting devotion actually looks like when it is lived out rather than spoken aloud. It is something they will carry with them always.
The family is also deeply grateful to the friends, family members, and staff at Bridges in Andover, whose kindness and commitment made an immeasurable difference through those years.
Linda is survived by her husband, Tsu Yuan Shen; her son, Andrew Shen of Sudbury, Massachusetts; her daughter, Gloria Shen of Santa Monica, California; her grandchildren, Hayden, Addison, and Parker Shen; and her sister, Manong Fan. She was preceded in death by her parents, Xiehua Fan and Liying Wang.
In lieu of flowers, the family welcomes donations to the Alzheimer's Association. The family also gently encourages those who are able, to extend kindness, patience, and understanding to families navigating the long and often quiet hardship of caring for a loved one with dementia.
Services will be at the Chinese Bible Church of Greater Lowell at 197 Littleton Road in Chelmsford, MA on Friday, June 26 at 10am. Arrangements have been entrusted to the Burke-Magliozzi Funeral Home of Andover.