Linda Seeligsohn Rice, 68

Linda Seeligsohn Rice, 68, of Devon, a founding member, former office manager, and past president of Temple Brith Achim in King of Prussia, died Thursday, April 1, of breast cancer at Bryn Mawr Terrace.

In 1970, Mrs. Rice and her husband, Howard, were among the young couples who decided to establish a reform synagogue in the Valley Forge area.

"There were about 22 of us, and we either had no children or had just started having children," Mrs. Rice told an Inquirer reporter in 1994. The first meeting for what would become Temple Brith Achim was in 1971 in Valley Forge Presbyterian Church.

After years of using various local venues for services and religious school, Temple Brith Achim dedicated its own building on South Gulph Road in King of Prussia in 1982. An addition was built in 1988 to house a social hall, a kitchen, office space, and classrooms. Two years ago, a new wing for an education center was completed.

Mrs. Rice served a term as president of Temple Brith Achim in the 1980s, and for 15 years, until the late 1990s, she was the synagogue's office manager. She remained active as a volunteer, heading the synagogue's Web site committee and its Torah restoration committee, her husband said.

In 1994, she told an Inquirer reporter that Brith Achim had come full circle for her in a personal way. "My son, Mark, who was in the first Hebrew school class, was the first member of that group to get married in the sanctuary this year," she said.

Mrs. Rice grew up in South Africa. In 1961 she joined her sister, Sandy, in Philadelphia. She took a secretarial job at Philip Klein Advertising in Center City, where she met her future husband, a copywriter there. "She went home and told her sister she had met the man she was going to marry," he said.

Mrs. Rice was later a secretary at Peirce Business School in Philadelphia and at Word Systems in Bala Cynwyd.

While raising her children, she was a volunteer at Caley Road Elementary School in King of Prussia. More recently, she volunteered at Women's Resource Center in Wayne, which provides counseling and legal and educational services to women.

Mrs. Rice enjoyed reading, the theater, and travel, and was a huge Phillies fan, her husband said.

In addition to her husband of 48 years, son, and sister, she is survived by a daughter, Cheryl Rice-Wohlstetter, and four grandchildren.

A funeral is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday, April 7, at Temple Brith Achim, 481 S. Gulph Rd., King of Prussia. Burial will be in Haym Salomon Memorial Park, Frazer.