Virginia L. Williams

Williams, Virginia L Was born in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska in 1917, the year the US entered the Great War. Her parents were Joseph Chauncey Williams (a sugar plant chemist with a gift of blarney) and Florence Adele (Wallace) Williams (a middle class western woman of enormous beauty and character.) She had an elder brother, Joe Williams (who died in Dallas about 1986). She was an infant during the Spanish Influenza of 1918. She was a child on a Nebraska ranch, and in various western towns, when those settlements looked like the Dodge City set of Gunsmoke (except with a few automobiles). She was once taken on a motor trip to Denver by her father (cross country, no roads) and witnessed the last major change of base of a large unit of horse cavalry. She lived in Denver for a while in the northwest area of town in an Italian neighborhood. She lived in Salt Lake City and Dallas in her high school years. During the Depression she had no chance for higher education, but by 1940 she worked for a Dallas blue printer. In 1941 or 1942 she went "booming" as a field clerk on defense construction contracts. In 1943, WWII, she enlisted in the WAAC and was trained in engineering drafting, which became her lifelong trade. In 1944 her unit was sent to the island of New Guinea to work for the headquarters of Far East Air Forces. It was not a picnic there. In New Guinea and on Leyte and Luzon, Philippines, she was starved, bombed, heard artillery, and saw first hand the awfulness of war. She earned the Good Conduct Medal, WW II Victory Medal, Pacific Theater Medal (with three battle stars), Philippine Liberation Medal, and WAAC Medal. She came home in somewhat of a shock and tried to go to college, but couldn't do it. Later, she met a jazz musician in Kansas City and married him, following his itinerant lifestyle all over the west. She gave birth to a son, Bill in 1953, but found herself divorced and a single mom not long after. Eventually her life stabilized and she found herself working as a woman draftsman in a man's field in Albuquerque during the Roaring Fifties when Albuquerque was a boomtown Later, she moved to Santa Fe to take a job with the NM Highway Dept. She moved to Denver after the Flood of 1965 (for the better schools) and she did her best to raise Bill through middle school, high school, and college. Later, she suffered a terrible automobile accident, which cured her of smoking and incipient alcoholism. During the later oil boom, she worked for AMAX until she gradually tapered off working into a sort of retirement. She was very involved in the Episcopal church for several years, even serving on the vestry (while also being sexton of All Saints / Merciful Savior). She traveled a lot by bus to see friends and relatives all over the country. Eventually she tired of the Denver winters and moved back to Albuquerque, where she did this and that and enjoyed her retirement. On day, she suffered a fall and went to Truth or Consequences for treatment. She stayed there living out the rest of her days in retirement at the New Mexico Veterans Home. As a person, it is believed that she really didn't want to live this long, but that is what God gave her and she took it. She was a very stoic person, a lady of decided opinions, salty humor, and iron character. She loved birds (she had a homemade feeder in Denver), and animals, and the world of nature. She loved to walk and to see the countryside. She was a great appreciator of history. She enjoyed her friends immensely. She was always curious about things. She was known for always being there for Bill, which made him always grateful.