Melinda Wilson, who emotionally helped rescue and resurrect the career of her husband and Beach Boys musician Brian Wilson, died at her home in Beverly Hills on Tuesday morning. She was 77 years old.
“Melinda was more than my wife. She was my savior,” Wilson said of his wife of 28 years in a statement posted on his website and social media. “She gave me the emotional security she needed to have a career. She encouraged me to make the music that was closest to my heart. She was my anchor. She was everything to us. Please pray for her.”
A spokesman for Wilson, Jean Sievers, said the cause of death was unknown. An additional unsigned statement from her children said she died peacefully at her home.
“She was a force of nature and one of the strongest women you could find,” the children's statement read. “She was not only a role model, the savior of our father and mother, but she was also a woman empowered by her spirit with a mission to better everyone she touched. We will miss her but appreciate everything she has taught us. How to care for the person next to you without expecting anything in return, how to find beauty in the darkest places and how to live life as your true self, with honesty and pride.”
Melinda Kay Ledbetter was born on October 3, 1946 in Pueblo, Colorado, the daughter of Rosemary and Leonard Ledbetter, and was raised in Whittier, where she attended Whittier College, according to Sievers and “The Nearest Faraway Place: Brian Wilson, the Beach Children and the Southern California Experience,” a 1994 book by Timothy White.
“After a 16-year career as a commercial model for designers such as Bob Mackie and Anne Klein, Melinda had become a top sales representative for a local Cadillac dealership and met Brian when she sold him a gold Seville,” he says. White's book.
“I sold him a car in about three seconds,” Melinda later told the Times. “I said, 'Don't you want to look at another color?' It was the ugliest brown car you had ever seen in your life. And he says, 'No, that's the one I want.' “
The couple dated on and off from 1986 to 1989, ending Wilson's “long period of solitude” since his divorce from Marilyn Wilson in the 1970s; The couple married at Wayfarers Chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes on February 6, 1995, according to White's book, after then-reclusive Brian Wilson escaped controversial treatment by psychologist Eugene Landy, who had overseen the couple's courtship.
“I got my life back when Dr. Landy's program was ended,” Wilson told the Times in 1998. “She [Melinda] It helped me get back into the swing of things. I began to relate to society and become part of it again.” Melinda Wilson added: “When we got married, eight people sued us. [and most have] missing. I've been dealing with it and [Brian’s] “I’ve been able to focus on his music again.”
Melinda Wilson was portrayed by actress Elizabeth Banks in the 2015 Bill Pohlad biopic, “Love & Mercy.”
Melinda Wilson is survived by her husband Brian Wilson; her children Daria, Delanie, Dylan, Dash and Dakota Wilson; and her nephew Patrick Ledbetter, Sievers said.
