From Aretha to Baptist hymns: George Linney’s life was tied together by an enduring faith

George Linney once compiled a list of 300 church hymns he knew by heart, first verse to last.

But his favorite was “Blessed Assurance,” the traditional and quietly elegant ode to the power of faith and spiritual rebirth built on a personal relationship with Jesus.

Linney, 79, died just before Christmas from complications from Parkinson’s Disease. Friends and family say that during his four decades in Charlotte, the Georgia native straddled different worlds — as a physician, a social activist, an athlete, a singer, a husband and father, and, most especially, an inquisitive man of faith.

Each sphere, they say, influenced the others with Linney’s instinct to serve acting as a common thread.

While practicing pediatrics at the Nalle Clinic, he once used his participation in the annual Charlotte Observer Marathon to raise money for the family of one of his most needy patients.

An avid golfer (a 7-handicapper) who served as a scorekeeper at The Masters tournament for some 50 years, Linney also played a leading role in persuading his fellow members of Myers Park Country Club to admit their first Jewish member in 1980, family members say.

“He worked along the edges of change and social justice, one conversation at a time, persuading the old blue-blood members at the club that here was someone who we needed to include in our community,” says his son, George Linney III, an ordained minister who conducted his father’s funeral in Virginia last Sunday. He called the service, “Radical Generosity.”

“Daddy quietly bowled people over with his encouragement, his optimism and his joy. Sometimes his optimism could come across as borderline untrustworthy — unless, that is, you spent a lifetime with him and understood that this was just the way he was.”

At the center it all was Linney’s faith, which was both traditional and ever evolving, says longtime friend Randall Mishoe, a former assistant pastor at Myers Park Baptist Church, where Linney and wife Barbara were longtime members and congregational leaders.

“George was a seeker and searcher. He was courageous and smart, and he was complex. Jesus was a central element in all of that. But George’s relationship with Jesus was never the same. He continued to add to it and add and add and add,” Mishoe says.

Some forms of faith can close down an inquiring mind, Mishoe says. Linney’s, which was honed for decades at his socially progressive Charlotte church, “led him to explore the complexities of the universe.”

Indeed, Linney appeared to make that journey fueled by an inner blessed assurance.

Appropriately, here is his story, here is his song.

Budweiser in a cup

George Edward Linney was born in 1943 in Washington, Ga., not far from Augusta. He played varsity tennis at Furman, and after medical school, served his residency at the University of Virginia.

There, he went on the most important blind date of his life. Six months later, Barbara Johnson and he were married in the UVA Chapel.

The couple came to Charlotte in 1971. Here, George Linney began his pediatrics practice at the Nalle Clinic. The Linneys also found their church, Myers Park Baptist, where they remain the only married couple in the congregation’s 80-year history to have both chaired the Board of Deacons.

Linney, a lifelong athlete, seriously took up running in the 1980s. He claimed that his best times in the nine marathons he entered occurred when Barbara met him at every 5-mile point, not with Gatorade, but with a paper cup holding a few ounces of Budweiser.

The family left Charlotte in the early 1980s and moved to Orlando, Fla., where Linney became medical officer for one of that city’s first HMOs. George III says getting medical care to those who needed it remained a personal ministry for his father.

After the couple’s two children graduated from high school, the Linneys ended what George came to call the family’s “Babylonian Exile.” They returned to Charlotte in 1995 and began teaching leadership skills to doctors and other medical personnel. Friends say the homecoming was driven at least in part by Barbara’s zeal to return to the city and Myers Park Baptist.

Linney loved to sing, not with the church choir, but sitting at his normal spot in the sanctuary, back and right of the center aisle. Mishoe says his friend’s rich baritone would rise from the back of the church, soar over the pews and reach him at the altar.

Away from church, Motown tunes were among his favorites. In Atlanta during the late 1960s, Aretha Franklin’s band members brought the then-medical student on stage in a Five Points club to sing backup to Franklin on “Respect,” the Queen of Soul’s signature anthem.

“I love the optics — a white Southern Baptist pulled up on the stage with Aretha Franklin,” his son George says. “Those were the optics of social justice ... a beautiful thing in the era of the ‘60s in Atlanta that did not involve fire hoses and German shepherds .. It’s about music and the shared passions that bring relationships together.”

Thanksgiving and music

Last year, George Linney closed one of the final loops of his life.

In May, he and Barbara left Charlotte and returned to Charlottesville, Va., where they had met and married and where their daughter Allison lives.

Linney had four months of good health, his family says, before the Parkinson’s, which had plagued him for a decade, took over.

The family spent its last holiday together on Thanksgiving. Linney mounted a physical recovery that day and was able to join the others at the table, singing along when “Lonely Teardrops,” “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” and “Tears of A Clown” took their bows on Spotify.

He died a month later. The family chose “Blessed Assurance” to close down his funeral.

“Angels descending bring from above,” the song promised. “Echoes of Mercy, whispers of love.”