Linda McCartney - Early Years

Early Years

Linda Louise McCartney, the second-eldest of four children, was born Linda Louise Eastman in New York City, to Jewish parents. She had one older brother, John (10 July 1939), and two younger sisters, Laura (born 1947), and Louise Jr. (born 1950). She grew up in the wealthy Scarsdale area of Westchester County, New York and graduated from Scarsdale High School in 1959. Her father was the son of Jewish Russian immigrants. He changed his name from Leopold Vail Epstein to Lee Eastman, and was not related to George Eastman of Eastman Kodak fame. He was songwriter Jack Lawrence's attorney, and at his request in 1942, Lawrence, while in the army, wrote a song called "Linda" in honor of the one-year-old. It was published in 1946, and recorded by Buddy Clark in 1947. John Eastman later became Paul McCartney's lawyer and manager, taking over from his father, Lee Eastman.

Her mother, Louise Sara (Lindner) Eastman—the daughter of Max J. Lindner, founder of the Lindner Company clothing store in Cleveland, Ohio—died in the crash of American Airlines Flight 1 in Queens, New York, in 1962. McCartney later said that because of her mother's death, she hated travelling by air. McCartney studied for a Fine Art major at the University of Arizona. Her first marriage was to Joseph Melville See Jr., whom she had met at college. They married on 18 June 1962, and their daughter Heather Louise was born on December 31, 1962. They were divorced in June 1965. McCartney later commented that See was a "nice man, a geologist, an Ernest Hemingway type". See committed suicide with a self-inflicted gunshot wound on 19 March 2000, at his home in Tucson, Arizona.