Linda Mossholder grew up in a lower-middle-class Jersey Shore household with her parents and brother. Her father worked as a railroad truck driver, and her mother worked in sewing factories.
“I watched my mother sit at the kitchen table and decide what bills she could pay this month and which ones could wait,” said Mossholder, 78. “Neither one of [my parents] had a higher education or instilled in me to care about other people.”
Caring for others was something that Mossholder found on her own.
“In third grade, one of the kids came to school whose house was heated by kerosene,” Mossholder said. “She always smelled like kerosene, and people made fun of her. Even at that early age, it really bothered me that because she was poor, she was not treated the same as other kids.”
Despite this early brush with social justice, when Mossholder left home for college at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, she studied language. She eventually transferred to Temple University and changed her major to elementary education.
After college, she taught third grade in Passaic city schools in New Jersey. It was a diverse neighborhood, one-third white, one-third Puerto Rican, and one-third African American. But her husband’s job brought their family to Licking County, a stark contrast to her home state.
“He got transferred; that is how we ended up in Newark,” Mossholder said. “It felt like I was moving back in time 20 years. Moving to lily-white Licking County was a weird adjustment.”
In 1973 Mossholder started volunteering at the Newark Drug Forum, later known as Pathways Crisis Hotline, a service that connects individuals or families seeking assistance with needed resources in their communities.
“The crisis center and 2-1-1 were all volunteers; there was no paid staff,” Mossholder said. “That gave me something I could do, and I could do well. That really helped me feel a little more useful, gave me a little more purpose than just staying at home with two little kids.”
In 1976, Mossholder became a grant writer at Licking and Delaware County Job Training, a U.S. Department of Labor program, where she handled massive workforce development grants.
“I’m talking millions of dollars to help people re-enter the workforce,” said Mossholder. “And we also had summer youth programs to help disadvantaged kids have some kind of opportunities.”
Jumping to a new position in 1989, Mossholder began working as director of parent education, once again at Pathways. Mossholder worked with parents whose children had been removed by child protective services, as well as children with perceived behavioral problems.
“I saw a lot of bias in how kids were removed from their homes,” Mossholder said.
Once again Mossholder watched the ripple effects of financial inequality. According to her, poor parents were written up for all offenses, from the enormous to the minuscule, while wealthy parents seemed to avoid consequences in most scenarios, even when they were a danger to their children.
In one case, Mossholder came across a parent in poverty who said she was written up for sending their child to school with a Lunchable for a meal, and nothing else.
“I think right then and there I decided people who were in poverty were treated a whole lot differently than other people, and somebody needed to speak up for them,” said Mossholder.
That realization grew, and Mossholder started tackling the problem directly as a volunteer for the Newark Think Tank on Poverty’s Coordinated Reentry Program.
Now a seasoned advocate for helping those in challenging circumstances, Mossholder began volunteering at Newark Homeless Outreach (NHO) in 2017.
Read more: Volunteers hand out water and popsicles amid the summer heat
Since then, she continues to effect positive change in people’s lives, helping to start an emergency warming center in Licking County, which has operated since 2019. With years of volunteering and public service under her belt now, Mossholder frequently connects with and hears back from the people whose lives she has touched.
“Sitting down and talking to Kirby, he used to call us his angels,” said Mossholder, remembering a now deceased friend she met volunteering at NHO. “That personal connection, I think it makes a big difference.”
Read more: The Person Next to Us
The recognition of humanity and the inherent value she sees in everyone is what drives Mossholder forward through thick and thin.
“Some people just don’t see people who are homeless or living in poverty as human beings, and I can’t deal with that,” said Mossholder. “I have to do my little piece to make sure that you are treated like a valuable person.”
And those pieces make up a much broader story, a mosaic of lives bettered by one woman’s consistent commitment to love, always standing up for the people around her no matter what.
When The Reporting Project released nomination forms for its 10 Over 60 project, Mossholder’s colleagues did not hesitate to nominate her.
“The announcement was made in church, and pretty much instantly she came to mind,” said 38-year-old kindergarten teacher Staci Franks. “She definitely does not want recognition, but she deserves it.”
Mossholder caught Franks’ attention quickly through her infinite kindness.
“She was always serving people in the church. She was always just up and helping people,” said Franks. “When I learned how much of her free time she spends at the Newark Homeless Outreach, it really clicked that she’s just an amazing person.”
Lifting people up is the throughline of Mossholder’s life.
Noah Fishman wrote for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. After graduation, Noah joined the staff at the Idaho Mountain Express in Ketchum, Idaho as a reporter.