By Michelle Durham

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) – You may not know her name, but the songs she wrote are familiar. Linda Creed’s love of music grew in the halls of Germantown High, but her life was cut tragically short by breast cancer in 1986, just as Whitney Houston topped the charts with a song she wrote. There’s a fundraising luncheon in her honor on Saturday at the Hilton on City Avenue to help local women battling this disease.

Linda Creed is gone, but the music she wrote lives on. And her friend Lisa Brownstein, who started the Linda Creed Breast Cancer Foundation in 1987 wants to make sure women in our area are screened.

“We do outreach programs for the African American Community and an outreach program for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender group. We’re just local women helping local women.”

And they offer financial support for those who can’t afford the co-pay for a mammogram or are going through treatment and can’t pay their rent.

Brownstein says Creed was a woman unimpressed with celebrity.

“She wanted to be just a Mom and a housewife and writing songs to her was just what she did.”

Brownstein says breast cancer robbed the world of her talent, but Creed would want others to have a better chance than she did.

For more information, go to LindaCreed.org.