Virginia Gaston Geddes of Santa Rosa died September 24 at the age of eighty-nine. Virginia was born in 1924 in Mobile, Alabama to Earl Gaston and Olive Haroun. She moved to Pensacola, Florida when she was six, and lived there until college, then moving permanently to the Bay Area in 1952.

Virginia nurtured a lifelong love of higher education, earning four post-secondary degrees over the course of her life. She graduated in 1947 with a BA in Spanish from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. She followed that with a Master of Divinity from Yale University in 1952, a Master of Library Science in 1966 and a Master of Arts in Folklore in 1982, the latter two from the University of California, Berkeley. Virginia worked in the education field for much of her life, beginning in the 1940s as a high school teacher, followed by working in education at the YWCA in the 1950s and as an elementary school librarian in the 1960s and 1970s.

Even when not enrolled in a formal academic program, she pursued various intellectual interests with great enthusiasm, such as a passion for Italian Renaissance religious painting, especially depictions of the Virgin Mary, first brought about by a visit to Italy in 1990. She published a book in 1983, Various Children of Eve, an analysis of different folklore and sociological interpretations of mainly Northern European stories of children of Eve other than Cain and Abel.

In addition to academic pursuits, Virginia enjoyed an interest in classical music throughout her life, especially Baroque composers such as J.S. Bach. She played piano for many decades and also had built a custom-made harpsichord based on an 18th-century design. A lifelong reader and lover of literature, she was known to quip that “life is what happens between books.” Virginia also loved travel, especially to cultural sites in Europe, which thrilled her from her first trip there on her honeymoon in 1951.

Virginia is survived by her husband of 63 years, Francis Geddes of Santa Rosa; her daughter Ann Geddes and son-in-law Gabriel Sonnino of Novato; and her son Patrick Geddes and daughter-in-law Ivy Lessner of Mill Valley. She was predeceased by her son David Geddes in 1962 and her sister Mildred Gaston Hurt in 2006. She is remembered fondly by both family and friends for not only her loving kindness, but also her sharp wit and delight in raucous laughter.

A memorial service for Virginia will be held Saturday 1 November at 1.00 pm at the Church of the Incarnation, 550 Mendocino Ave., Santa Rosa. Memorial gifts can be sent to San Francisco Safehouse, PO Box 40369, San Francisco, CA 94140 or at http://www.sfsafehouse.org.