Belinda McClam

Obituary

Belinda McClam, born in 1966, passed from this world in 2026 at the age of 60, leaving behind a husband who loved her deeply, a son who carried her heart, and a life that clearly meant everything to those closest to her.

Belinda was a woman whose story, like so many of the most meaningful ones, is best understood not through grand announcements but through the quiet, steady presence she offered the people she loved. She built her life around the relationships that mattered most, and in doing so, she gave the people lucky enough to know her something they will carry forward for the rest of their days.

At the center of her world was her husband, William Longmore. Theirs was a partnership of twenty-six years, the kind of marriage that weathers the full range of what life has to offer and comes out the other side stronger and deeper for it. Twenty-six years is not simply a number. It is thousands of ordinary mornings and evenings, countless conversations, shared meals, inside jokes, difficult seasons leaned into together, and quiet moments of comfort that accumulate into something extraordinary. William was her partner through all of it, and she was his. The bond they built over more than two decades speaks to who Belinda was as a person: loyal, present, and deeply devoted to the people she chose to love.

She was also a mother. Her son Michael Fogel, who makes his home in North Carolina, is the other great love of her life and one of the most enduring pieces of herself that Belinda leaves behind in this world. There is a particular kind of love that exists between a mother and her only child, something singular and fierce and full of a tenderness that does not have an easy name. Michael carries that love with him now, and it will not diminish with time. If anything, the ways his mother shaped him, encouraged him, and stood by him will only become clearer and more precious as the years pass. He is proof of who she was, and in him, she continues.

Belinda spent sixty years living a life that left marks on the people around her. She was a wife for twenty-six of those years, a mother for all the years that Michael has been alive, and a person who, in ways both large and small, made her corner of the world a warmer place. The details of a life are not always captured in titles or achievements or milestones. Sometimes the most important things are found in the way a person made you feel when you walked into the room, in the consistency of their presence, in the way they showed up when it counted.

Those who knew Belinda knew someone who showed up. That much is clear in the love her family carries for her now.

A service has been held to honor her memory and to give those who cared for her a moment to come together, to grieve alongside one another, and to remember. Grief shared is not grief lessened, exactly, but it is grief made more bearable. And in the gathering of people who loved Belinda, there was surely something of her still present, in the stories told and the tears shed and the laughter that surfaces even in the hardest moments, because it always does when the person being remembered was someone who brought real joy into the lives of others.

William and Michael are left now to navigate a world that looks different without her in it. That is the truth of loss, and there is no softening it entirely. But they are not navigating it without resources. They have the twenty-six years of marriage William shared with Belinda, the lessons she taught and the love she gave freely. They have Michael's memories of his mother and whatever she instilled in him along the way. They have each other. And they have the community of people who will keep showing up for them in the weeks and months ahead, as those who loved Belinda find their own ways to honor her by caring for the family she treasured.

Belinda McClam was sixty years old. She was a wife. She was a mother. She was, by every evidence of the life she led and the people who grieve her now, someone worth grieving deeply, and someone worth remembering well.

She is survived by her husband, William Longmore, after twenty-six years of marriage, and by her son, Michael Fogel, of North Carolina.