But as she reminded Walnut Hill's graduates, like a butterfly, she had endured challenging changes before spreading her wings. As a noticeably tall middle-school student in New York City, she "had very long, skinny legs and knobby knees," and was a flute player with asthma.

En route to a career as an educator, she rose above those years of being teased. She played flute in Broadway pit orchestras and a solo in Carnegie Hall, won a high school track and field medal at Madison Square Garden, and become a semi-pro tennis player.

"My mother always encouraged me that I could do it all," she said. "I just couldn't do it all at the same time."

Mrs. Hughes, whose diversity leadership locally helped inspire efforts regionally and nationally, died of cancer Dec. 3 in Care Dimensions Hospice House in Lincoln. She was 65 and lived in Framingham.

"There are people all over the country mourning her and celebrating her right now," said Eric Barber, head of school at Walnut Hill School for the Arts in Natick.

As the school's inaugural director of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, "Linda has had a profound impact on Walnut Hill," he said. "She really was the ignition point for a school that I now regard as a national leader" in DEIB.

That view, Barber added, is widely shared, and her work led other schools to take note around New England and across the country.

"The greatest thing she accomplished is that this work is now part of the fabric and everyday function of the school," Barber said. "That one person could accomplish that, with help from others, in a decade is pretty astounding. I've not seen that happen elsewhere."

A key part of her ability to accomplish so much so quickly was the way she had always engaged with students, colleagues, and friends.

YaSheka Taylor, who owns A+ Nursery and Preschool in Milton, was a Boston teenager when she met Mrs. Hughes and her husband, Bill, at a tutoring center in 1988.

As a tutor, Mrs. Hughes offered life lessons beyond what was needed to grasp algebra's complexities, Taylor recalled.

"There are certain things you don't need to experience," Mrs. Hughes would tell Taylor while cautioning her to avoid some of life's temptations.

"I have held all those virtues close to my heart and followed each direction as if it was a path that led to a successful plan," Taylor wrote in a draft of a eulogy she will deliver at her mentor's funeral on Wednesday.

Mrs. Hughes was known as Mama Linda, and Taylor wrote that whenever she confronts a challenge, she asks herself "what would Mama Linda do" before making a decision.

"Mama Linda lives in me and has left an indelible impression of her life on my way of being," Taylor said.

As an educator, Mrs. Hughes "was very, very focused on women and girls," said her longtime friend Dr. Andrea Reid, associate dean for student and multicultural affairs in the medical education program at Harvard Medical School and director of the Office of Recruitment and Multicultural Affairs.

"She was constantly encouraging them to stretch, to spread their wings," Reid said.

The youngest of four siblings, Linda Lifsey was born in Harlem on March 30, 1959, and grew up in that part of New York City, a daughter of Waddell Lifsey and Luvenia Green Lifsey.

As a girl, Linda attended Manhattan Country School, whose founders drew inspiration from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

Studying ballet, she performed with the Dance Theatre of Harlem's junior company and graduated from the High School of Music & Art in New York that inspired the 1980 film "Fame."

Childhood and youth weren't always easy, though.

"Some of my peers teased me and told me I looked like a giraffe. It wasn't meant as compliment," she said in the June graduation speech she titled "Mama Linda's Essential Lessons of Life."

As a teenager, her musical talents brought her onstage with jazz flutist and saxophonist Hubert Laws. She also studied with classical flutist Harold Jones.

One time after a Jackson 5 concert in New York, she and a friend found a way to meet the Jacksons, who invited them to play their flutes in "a memorable jam session," Bill Hughes wrote in an obituary tribute to his wife.

She first arrived in Boston as a college student, attending Boston University. Then she returned home and studied at City College of New York, where she was a tennis team cocaptain.

Bill Hughes met her, via a mutual friend, when he was in college.

"She was introduced to me as a woman of faith, and her eyes were beautiful," he recalled in an interview. "Her eyes captivated me immediately. She was beautiful, she was gracious, she was gifted."

They married in 1989, and he is now president and chief executive of Education Design Lab, a nonprofit with a headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Linda and Bill Hughes were "twin souls," Taylor wrote in the notes for her eulogy, adding that "to know Linda is to honor Bill. To know Bill is to revere Linda."

Mrs. Hughes had met Reid in 1986, when both were living in Boston and were roommates.

"That was the beginning of what I can only describe as a friendship made in heaven," Reid said. "We became sisters."

In addition to her husband, Mrs. Hughes leaves their two daughters, Sara of Ann Arbor, Mich., and Alyson of Framingham; and a sister, Raven Mills of Arlington, Va.

Family, friends, and colleagues will gather to celebrate Mrs. Hughes's life at 11 a.m. Wednesday in the Bethel AME Church in Boston.

A nonsmoker who was diagnosed with lung cancer a decade ago, Mrs. Hughes underwent surgery and participated in clinical trials.

"Linda remained steadfast in living and giving, asking how her journey could inspire and bless others," her husband wrote.

She was treated at Massachusetts General Hospital, where her friend Reid is a faculty member of the department of medicine and the gastrointestinal unit.

As a patient, Mrs. Hughes never sought pity.

"She was very spiritual. She was full of faith," Reid said. "She was praising God through everything she was going through. But she also was saying, 'I'm going to live each day as if it is my last one,' and she did."

Long before her diagnosis, Reid said, Mrs. Hughes recognized the value in each moment.

"It was unbelievable just how incredible her life was," Reid said. "She looked at every day as a gift, and not just when she got sick. She looked at it that way before, which is why her life was so special. It really was a gift."