Lynne Posner

Oct. 3, 1948 - Feb. 15, 2025

Lynne Hildebrant Posner, 1948-2025 Lynne Hildebrant was born in Napa in October 1948, the daughter of George and Joan Hildebrant. As a toddler she helped her parents bake the adobe bricks from which they built the family home, at a time when Napa was still known for its mental hospital and prunes rather than its vineyards. The oldest of four (Gordon, Wendy, and Shelby), Lynne grew up riding bikes and making mudpies in the adobe house atop a hill in the family’s tight-knit South Napa neighborhood. A standout student at Napa High, Lynne entered U.C. Berkeley in 1966. There, she met her husband, David Posner, in 1968, and they spent some very happy years there amidst the tumult of the Bay Area in the late 1960s. She and David married in 1970 and for 55 years enjoyed a wonderful partnership built on mutual respect, shared humor, lots of music, and bottomless love. With David, she moved to Chicago in 1977, where their first child, Charles Jacob (C.J.) was born. Later, they moved to San Jose, where C.J. was joined by Miriam in 1979 and Rebecca in 1982. When Lynne was 45, the family was euphoric to welcome the much-longed-for fourth child, whom she named Elyanah (God Has Answered). Lynne loved children. She taught preschool first at the Central San Jose and then at the East Valley YMCA, where she directed the preschool program. Later, after earning her teaching credential, Lynne taught elementary school in San Jose’s Alum Rock Unified School District. She was an extraordinary teacher: empathetic, perceptive, and endlessly kind. Her favorite grade to teach was third as she loved watching her students develop distinct personalities and opinions. Even amidst the strictures of standardized tests and prescribed lesson plans, Lynne knew by instinct and experience how to impart a sense of magic in the classroom, playing Vivaldi for the kids and asking them to draw their sensations, or matching children with exactly the right books. Lynne had a special affection for children that needed a little extra care and was a safe space and source of unconditional positive regard for countless students. Lynne also loved music, a delight she passed on to her students and children. She sang in choirs throughout her life, maintaining equal devotions to Brahms and Bob Dylan. On weekends, she would drive from Napa to Sacramento to take voice lessons with musician Brad Slocum, studying the music of Brahms, Saint-Saëns, and Schumann. The family home constantly rang with her alto, and later with the sounds of her children practicing their own scales and chord progressions, with her encouragement. It went without saying that all her kids would play an instrument, and she viewed music and art as unquestionably as important as academic instruction. Her kids, of course, knew her best as a mother, and in that capacity, she was phenomenal: as endlessly compassionate as she was quietly unconventional. She surrounded her family in a rock-solid sense of love and safety, and each of her kids knew that they were seen and loved for exactly who they were. She encouraged her children to wiggle their toes in mud, to delight in Charlotte’s Web and Superfudge, to fear no insect or snake, to make potato-print art and cornstarch-and-water goop. She hosted boisterous Halloween and birthday parties, complete with treasure hunts and toilet-paper mummy contests. Lynne cared much more about integrity than appearances, and she taught her kids to live out their commitment to racial justice and human compassion. As her children grew older, she worked unbelievably hard, teaching all day and then driving kids to endless lessons and rehearsals, all before making dinner and finally falling asleep over lesson plans. She was hugely proud of each of her children, different though they are, taking pleasure in each of their distinct personalities and accomplishments. There is so much more to say about Lynne: the campfire songs and the storytimes, the delight in her grandchildren and the homemade Halloween costumes, the love of reading and the long walks on wintertime beaches. More than anything else, however, Lynne taught her family about the power and wisdom of unremitting and lavish love. Somehow she knew that love, offered without restriction or condition, builds alchemical strength in children and families. Because she taught us so well how to love each other, her family knows, even as we grieve, that she left us strong enough to endure this tremendous loss. We hope that, in her memory, you’ll offer wholehearted, unconditional, unqualified love to the people in your own life. Lynne is survived by her husband, David; her siblings, Wendy, Shelby, and Gordon; her children, C.J., Miriam (Andy Wallace), Rebecca (Bruno Broll-Barone), and Elyanah (Niyati Rodricks); and her beloved grandchildren, Dora, Davy, and Topher.