Annabel Lindy, 78, property manager

Annabel "Rusty" Flesher Lindy, 78, of Center City, a partner with Lindy Property Management in Jenkintown and a community activist, died of cancer Tuesday at the Visiting Nurse Association Hospice in East Falls.

For more than 20 years, Mrs. Lindy worked with her husband, Philip, purchasing, rehabilitating, and managing apartment buildings in the Philadelphia area.

The firm, which won awards for excellence from the Apartment Association of Greater Philadelphia, is now run by the Lindys' two sons, Frank and Alan. It was established in 1933 by Philip Lindy's parents, Jacob and Freeda.

Mrs. Lindy served on the boards of the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, the Federation Housing and Jewish Community Center, the Gershwin Y, the National Liberty Museum, and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, where she endowed a student internship in honor of her father, William Flesher. She was a founding sponsor of the Jewish Reconstructionist Camp in the Poconos.

She also established and endowed Limmud, a program to promote Jewish education through annual conferences, discussion groups, publications, and events. She initiated and funded Collaborative, a program to connect Jewish couples and singles in their 20s and 30s in Philadelphia, and supported the Allens Lane Art Center and Arcadia University.

Alan Lindy said he was just now realizing how many projects she supported, including learning last week about the Peru Lindy Legacy, a Smithsonian Institution archaeology project she funded after visiting Peru. Her academic pursuits included the study of ancient matriarchal societies.

In the 1970s, Mrs. Lindy traveled to the Soviet Union several times in support of Jewish refuseniks, and was involved in the program to settle Ethiopian Jews in Israel.

She was active in Democratic politics, and in the 1960s, when she lived in Cheltenham, she lost elections to become a state representative and to be a member of the Cheltenham Township school board.

A collection of her essays titled, Her Story,  is scheduled for a book launching next month.

Mrs. Lindy, a graduate of Abington High School, attended Beaver College, now Arcadia University, on an academic scholarship. After earning a bachelor's degree in chemistry, she worked in a laboratory testing beer.

In 1951, while still in college, she married Philip Lindy, whom she met on a blind date. From 1959 until the mid-1960s, she was coordinator for the Philadelphia Great Books Council before joining her husband's firm.

She interrupted her career in apartment management from 1979 to the mid-1980s to be a stockbroker for Merrill Lynch.

Mrs. Lindy was fully engaged in the lives of her children and grandchildren and extended family members. Her family described her as having "a generous heart, a no-nonsense pragmatism, and an indomitable spirit."

In addition to her husband and sons, she is survived by a daughter, Elaine; a sister; and eight grandchildren.

A funeral will be at 11 a.m. tomorrow at Levine & Son Memorial Chapel, 4737 Street Road, Trevose. Burial will be in Roosevelt Memorial Park, Trevose.