Linda Penniman

Nicholas Penniman IV died on 29 September 2026 at Avow Hospice, aged 88, after a long battle with lymphoma. Linda Penniman submitted her resignation from the council the same day. A special election to fill her seat was set for 2 February 2027.

Her own death, at the age of 83, was announced on 20 October 2026 in a statement from Councilmember Scott Schultz and by the City of Naples, and was reported the same day by WGCU, the Naples Daily News, WINK News and Gulf Coast News. No cause of death was made public. City Manager Gary Young said: "As we mourn her passing, we pray for peace and comfort for her children. May we always remember her legacy of generosity, her strength, her kindness and her deep commitment to the community she so dearly loved." WGCU general manager Corey Lewis recalled her constant encouragement of the station's expansion into local news. The City Council said it would recognise her service, with details to be announced later.

Linda Penniman came from Springfield, Illinois. In a 2016 interview with Florida Weekly she said that growing up in a capital city made politics part of her DNA: her father ate breakfast out every day at a place next to the Capitol buildings, so the day began with talk of politics and it became a large part of conversation at home. Public service, she said, was therefore a comfortable ambition to consider. Her first job was selling advertisements for the local newspaper.

She married Nicholas G. Penniman IV, a Princeton graduate who rose to become publisher of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and senior vice president of newspaper operations at the Pulitzer Publishing Company, retiring in 1999. The couple had two children and lived in St. Louis, where she was involved in community life.

The Pennimans first came to Naples in 1976, when her sister moved there with her family, and later made the city their home, buying their first house in The Moorings. She served on the Moorings Property Owners Association board for several years, two of them as chair. The demolition of many of the neighbourhood's original homes and their replacement by much larger dwellings made land use the focus of her civic work. She joined the city Planning Advisory Board, then the Collier County Coastal Advisory Committee, and completed the Greater Naples Leadership programme.

She also chaired Collier County Waterkeeper, served on a task force for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and on the boards of the Neighborhood Health Clinic and other groups, and worked closely with Ethics Naples on the push for a city ethics commission, which was established after voters approved a charter amendment in August 2020. In 2015 the Community Foundation of Collier County named her a Woman of Initiative.

She was first elected to Naples City Council on 4 February 2014, became vice mayor in 2016 and served in that role until 2018, and was re-elected on 6 February 2018 as the top vote getter in a four way race for three seats. She resigned on 16 January 2019 because of her husband's declining health. During the years off the council she served on and then chaired the advisory council of WGCU Public Media. She won back a council seat on 19 March 2024 in a contentious six way race for three seats that ended in a recount, and afterwards published Gutter Politics: City of Naples 2024, her account of what she saw as dirty politics in that campaign. She served as vice chair of the Community Redevelopment Agency from 2024 and as its chair in 2026, and was known on the council for her work on land use, affordable housing, ethics reform and the environment.

Linda and Nick Penniman were married for 57 years and had two children and grandchildren. They worked side by side on environmental causes in Southwest Florida: he was a former board chair of the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and a trustee of the Everglades Foundation, and in 2020 the Conservancy presented the couple together with its highest honour, the Eagle Award. Twice she stepped away from public office to care for him, saying in October 2026 that she wanted to spend time with her children and grandchildren in the Midwest.

Linda Penniman's public life in Naples ran from neighbourhood association work to the leadership of the city council. She is remembered for pressing the case for the city's ethics commission, for her attention to water quality, coastal resilience and the scale of new building, and for long service to public media through WGCU. Colleagues described a generous and determined public servant whose work, in the words of the city manager, left the community better for having known her.