Page 171 - Always Virginia

Always Virginia 159

the telephone. She was also a prolific writer of thousands of letters,
most of them to me, and I have saved them all.
She was a photographer since she was 15; her last roll of film
was shot 70 years later this last October 31 at a Halloween party
where she won first prize for best costume. She was a cook and
a baker who was famous for her banana cream pies with six-inch
meringue. Her house was white-glove clean. She was a fashion plate
who collected clothes. My father’s favorite color for her was blue. So
blue was always her favorite color. She modeled her wedding dress
at a fashion show for charity here at St Philomena’s thirty-five years
after her wedding. She donated her dinner-dance dresses from the
1950s and 1960s to the costume department of a community the-
ater group. For years, at the orphanage out on Heading Avenue, she
weekly volunteered to hold unwanted babies in her arms. In 1954,
she took a foster son into our home to care for him. In the 1960s,
she was caregiver to her grandchildren Scott, Dianna, and Laura.
She loved movies and plays and the actress Alice Faye and Andy
Williams. She was an Irish princess whose father had a rare blood
condition found only in Irish kings. When she was 73, she flew
to Ireland and she hung upside down by her heels, out of a castle
window, ten stories up, to kiss the Blarney Stone. She bragged, “Irish
and Catholic, thank God.” Yet she understood that for a thousand
years before her family was a thousand-years Catholic they were
Irish Druids. She knew who she was and she accepted her identity.
Like many of you, she was a St. Philomena pioneer who helped
found and build this parish with funds and volunteer work. I was
one of the first St. Phil’s altar boys for 16 years from 1947-1963, and
when I needed a ride to early mass when I was too young to drive,
my mom who never liked to get up early, drove me to serve. She
was afraid of cats and mice. Even though she lit up her house on
Willow Lane with so many spotlights that we called it “Virginia’s
Little Waco,” she was a progressive person.
She was an intelligent woman who changed with the chang-
ing times of the complicated world of today. She was a progressive