Virginia was a child of the beautiful state of Wisconsin. She was born the same day that the Treaty of Versailles was signed which formally ended World War I, a war in which her father had served and, happily, survived. She had a rather charmed childhood in the town of Kenosha during the 1920's, living in a big house with her mother and father, and having all four grandparents to visit nearby (including a grandfather who was a confectioner!) Her mother, however, was a wanderlust, and decided to leave her husband and Kenosha, and drive across country to Hollywood, CA in a Model A with her two children in tow in the early 1930's. Virginia attended Hollywood High School and reveled in those Golden years of Hollywood where a shy teenage girl could collect the autographs of the likes of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow. Virginia married Richard Vine in 1941 and had two children, a son in 1944 and daughter in 1947. She began working for General Motors in Van Nuys, California in 1948 and continued working for GM during her "favorite years" in New York City, living and working on 57th Street in mid-town Manhattan for six years, a time in her life she would remember with fondness for the rest of her life. Virginia was the constant caregiver to her family which included her mother felled by a stroke and her only brother who was a victim of Multiple Sclerosis. She raised two children and one grandchild during the challenging 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's. After retiring from GM in 1973, she moved to Oxnard, California in 1976 with her grandson, Morgan. Besides her motherly and grandmotherly duties during her retirement years, she found great pleasure with her bridge club people, her family pets, and traveling whenever possible with family and friends to many locations around the world, perhaps her favorite being the beautiful Lake Tahoe region.

At Christmastime, 1992, Virginia took a flash picture of the family sitting around the festive board awaiting the last Christmas dinner she was to prepare for them (she was diagnosed with cancer early the following year and passed away shortly thereafter). A bright flash of light in the mirror behind the family signified her presence in the picture; the following are the closing lines of a poem her daughter wrote about that moment:

"And although the earthly light has dimmed,
The brightness will remain forever within:
All our hearts and our minds and our souls have
been touched
By your unselfish kindness that we witnessed so much.

May the flash in the mirror of that Christmas now past
Forever remind us of a love that can last."