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Lingo passed away at Lynn House, a senior citizen apartment and assisted living center in Alexandria where she was recovering from a hip injury since September. She was GW's longest-serving employee, and her death was memorialized Friday by the campus' flags being lowered to half-staff.
Vice President of Communication Michael Freedman, who worked with Lingo and oversaw the department she was in, said she was dedicated to the University.
"There was nothing that I knew of that she cared about more than GW," Freedman said. "This was her professional life and this became part of her personal life."
Born on Sept. 7, 1924, Lingo was an only child and spent her youth in the Adams Morgan home in which she grew up. She attended Gunston Hall, a private school for girls in D.C., with classmate Margaret Truman, the daughter of President Harry Truman.
The women went on to attend GW together, and were friends throughout college. Lingo was a frequent guest at the White House, where she would go to participate in sing-alongs and other Truman family activities.
A French language and literature major at GW, she was the president of the French Club, as well as a member of the Glee Club, Mortar Board, Phi Beta Kappa and the Pi Beta Phi sorority.
Lingo graduated from GW in 1946 and spent a decade traveling and volunteering, including translating letters from French to English for the Red Cross. She spent one fall working in GW's Office of Admissions and also worked as a publications assistant at the Korean Pacific Press.
As a young adult she volunteered at the D.C. office of the United Service Organization, which President Roosevelt created to provide morale, welfare and recreational services to the troops during World War II. Her mother was the director of D.C.'s USO, and her father had a career in the Navy.
In 1956 she returned permanently to GW and would come to take on various roles dealing with public relations, specifically community relations. From 1956 to1964 she worked as a staff writer in the Office of Public Relations at GW. After 1964 she served as the assistant director of university relations at GW, where she worked until this fall when she went on medical leave.
