Dear friend of Barbara Sinatra shares insight following her death
KESQ News Channel 3 and CBS Local 2’s Lauren Coronado met with a longtime friend of Barbara Sinatra to get a glimpse into her life as a socialite following the death of the prominent Coachella Valley philanthropist at age 90 this week.
It’s a friendship more than 50 years strong. Nelda Linsk is one of Sinatra’s best friends and she took us back to their glory days.
“We were good friends from the very beginning and I knew she was going to be a friend from the first moment I met her,” Linsk said.
Linsk and Sinatra met in the fall of 1965 at the star-studded Racquet Club in Palm Springs. Their mornings were spent playing golf and playing tennis in the afternoons.
“Every gardener in town knew our first names. We would stop at everybody’s pools, jump in their pools, because we knew they weren’t home. But even if they were home, they wouldn’t mind, we knew everyone,” Nelda Linsk added.
All while maintaining the title of Palm Springs’ top models.
“Someone sent me a picture the other day, and we were both in bikinis at the Racquet Club and we were doing a fashion show and we’re looking in the mirror and it’s a picture of the front of us and the back of us, and I showed it to Barbara and said, ‘Barbara, look at us! We were hot!,'” Nelda said, laughing.
“All the men sat at this one table and they had whistles and they would blow the whistles when we came down the runway, and of course we would strut even more,” Linsk said.
The duo’s social life slowed down when Mrs. Sinatra decided to fulfill her dream of opening the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Center in Rancho Mirage.
“People loved Barbara. All these children loved her. When they saw her walk through the door, they would run and grab her,” Linsk said.
As Mrs. Sinatra’s final days came closer, Linsk would visit her everyday.
“With someone like Barbara, you expect them to live forever. You don’t expect them to ever go on, pass away. You think they’ll be here forever,” Linsk said.
Linsk says knowing her best friend is reunited with her loved ones, brings her joy.
“I would love to see what’s going on up there. Not only frank, all the rat pack. They’re singing and dancing in the streets, I’m sure. She was ready to go. She was ready to meet Frank,” Linsk said.
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