Former Livingston resident, major cancer fund raiser, loses battle with cancer

Jennifer Goodman Linn, who founded a successful patient-run fundraiser for New York's Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, raising millions of dollars to combat rare cancers, died on Wednesday. Mrs. Linn, a former Livingston resident, was 40.
She lost her own battle with cancer, seven years after being diagnosed with sarcoma.
Mrs. Linn founded Cycle for Survival in 2007 to benefit the cancer center. Initially a grass-roots, indoor cycling event run mainly by Linn’s close friends and family members, Cycle for Survival grew quickly into a landmark annual event on the cancer fundraising calendar.
Recent Cycle for Survival events, held in February and March in New Jersey, New York and other locations, including internationally, raised nearly $5 million, friends said.
“She was probably the most inspirational person anyone would ever meet,” said Jeanne Silberman, a close friend of Mrs. Linn dating back to high school.
Despite the travails she faced in battling her own illness, Mrs. Linn possessed enough incentive and drive to continue to shed light on rare cancers, she said.
"Her life motto was to live fearlessly," Silberman said. "Her legacy is to live a fearless life, to set out and just do and not be scared of failure."
In total, Cycle for Survival has generated in excess of $9 million, all of which has been donated to Memorial Sloan-Kettering, where Mrs. Linn was a patient.
Mrs. Linn was inducted into the Livingston High School Hall of Fame last year and received numerous awards because of her work, including the Wynona M. Lipman Empowerment Award from the state of New Jersey in 2008.
A family friend, Diane Wanat, said Mrs. Linn started Cycle for Survival on her own, in conjunction with an exercise coach at her local gym.
"It grew until it reached worldwide," Wanat said. "Jennifer was a go-getter."
Mrs. Linn faced her illness with courage, and was determined to see her project become a success, Wanat said.
"She was a dynamo. She wasn't afraid of anything," Wanat said. "She lived a life."
Mrs. Linn is survived by her husband David, of Manhattan; her parents, Leonard and Sandra Goodman, of Livingston; and an older brother, Brett Goodman, of North Caldwell.
Services will be held at 11:45 a.m. Friday, July 22, at Riverside Memorial Chapel, 180 W. 76th St., New York.
She will be buried in Beth Israel Cemetery in Woodbridge.