Funeral Service Live Stream:
Events
The visitation will take place on Saturday, January 11, 2025 starting 10:00AM – 11:00AM EST at the St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, located at 917 Montrose Road, Rockville, MD 20852.
The Mass Of Christian Burial will take place on Saturday, January 11, 2025 starting 11:00AM – 12:00PM EST at the St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, located at 917 Montrose Road, Rockville, MD 20852. For those unable to attend the service in-person, you can participate remotely by viewing the live stream of the service (please scroll up to see the video).
Order of Service
Obituary
Linda Christine Luisi, a resident of Potomac, Maryland, died on December 31, 2024 after a four-year battle with a rare neuroendocrine cancer. She was 65-years old.
Luisi was born on March 25, 1959 at Edwards Air Force Base, where her father served in the Air Force, and also spent time in West Lafayette, Indiana before settling with her family in Anaheim, California. She attended Valencia High School in Placentia, California and graduated from Pomona College cum laude with a degree in International Relations in 1981. She earned a master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies from Yale University in 1984. Luisi was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency from Yale and started working there in March 1985.
A Life Mensa member, Luisi did not back away from challenging assignments, leading high-profile, crisis-prone analytic efforts on East Asia and Latin America. She was an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow, advising former California Representative Howard Berman on the House International Relations Committee. She also served as Director of Legislative Affairs on the National Security Council Staff from May 2001 to June 2002. In that capacity, she advised the National Security Advisor and her Deputy on legislative issues as the United States moved to a war footing after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Luisi later served as Deputy Director for Resource Management and Investment at the Director of National Intelligence’s National Counterproliferation Center, where she led a unit that evaluated Intelligence Community resource allocation and performance against the counterproliferation mission. Over her career, Luisi earned 23 Exceptional Awards and Meritorious Unit Citations and was awarded the Career Commendation Award.
Having traveled extensively for work, Luisi loved foreign travel. She visited all seven continents, the last two–Antarctica and Africa–after being diagnosed. In total, she visited 29 countries. During her 2022 visit to Machu Picchu in Peru, Luisi combined her love of travel, archaeology, and art by hand-drawing a picture of the ruins before her, utilizing skills she had newly developed after a series of drawing classes.
Additional interests included competing in road races, art and music, and animals. Most of the races she competed in were local, but in 2005, she flew to Tampa, Florida to participate in the St. Anthony Olympic Distance Triathlon, which she completed in three and a half hours. She enjoyed going to museums and concerts, holding season tickets to the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She was an avid animal lover and was never without one or more furry or feathered friends to share whatever abode she called home. She often regaled family and friends with stories of their antics.
Luisi also devoted her time and talent to volunteer work. She led a support ministry for twelve years at her local Catholic church and had leadership roles in local chapters of her undergraduate college and graduate university alumni clubs, where she organized enrichment and career planning activities for club members in the D.C. area.
Luisi was preceded in death by her mother, Wanda Luisi, and her uncle, Daniel Klaman. She is survived by her father, James Luisi; sister, Alaina Luisi; sister and brother-in-law, Lori and Daniel Hepler; nephew, James Hepler, and his family, wife, Emily Hepler and daughter, Lydia; niece, Katherine Hepler; aunt, Nancy Klaman; cousins, Lyn Klaman and Daniel Klaman; boyfriend, John Hrastar. Her beloved pets will miss her.
Funeral services will be held at St. Elizabeth Catholic Church, 917 Montrose Road, Rockville, MD on January 11, 2025; visitation 10 to 11 a.m.; mass: 11 a.m. to 12 noon; reception: 12 noon to 2 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, donations may be made to the American Cancer Society.