At VHS, Linda was active in basketball, band, student publications, drama, student council and Y-Teens. She achieved all-conference recognition in basketball, earned numerous “1” ratings in instrumental music competitions, received the Outstanding Bandsman Award in 1966, and was editor of the Bluejay in 1966. During summers, she was a lifeguard and swim instructor at the Villisca pool.
Linda’s journalistic skills grew while at the University of Iowa, where she received her B.A. in Journalism in 1969. She was first a reporter for The Daily Iowan (the university newspaper) and then its City Editor.
Linda moved to New Jersey, where she worked as a daily newspaper reporter. She later became Public Information Director for the New Jersey Lottery and subsequently held similar positions for the New Jersey Department of Insurance and the New Jersey Department of Transportation. Her interest in public relations culminated in her establishing her own firm, Artlip Communications, which she still operates.
Her Villisca roots run deep. Linda is devoted to preserving Villisca’s history. In recent years, she co-founded the “Save the Volcano” campaign to locate and preserve all issues of the Villisca Volcano. With her brother, she co-founded VHSGRADS.com to digitize, among other memorabilia, the yearbooks of both Villisca’s and Nodaway’s schools; and for which effort the two shared the 2012 Loren Horton Community History Award from the State Historical Society of Iowa. Since 2013, her weekly column about local history for The Villisca Review/Stanton Viking has touched many lives. She is also the editor of the Villisca Historical Society newsletter. In 2016, as an administrator of the Forgotten Iowa Historical Society, a Facebook group of 30,000 members, she was instrumental in bringing Iowa History Day to Villisca.
Linda Artlip Weinstein, a 2017 member of the Villisca Bluejay Hall of Fame, lives in Moorestown, New Jersey.