Mrs. Virginia Golding Wilkinson's Obituary
Virginia “Ginny” Rosalind Wilkinson (née Golding) passed away in the early morning hours of December 24, 2017. She went peacefully, in her own home, at the venerable age of ninety-seven.
Ginny was born on October 29, 1920, in Reading, Maryland. She often joked that she waited to be born until the ratification of the 19th amendment, which guaranteed all American women the right to vote. Only Ginny and her younger sister, Edith, were born below the Mason-Dixon Line and consequently labeled “The Rebels”. Her parents were Warren and Matilda Golding (née Smith). The siblings, in birth order, were Warren, Marie, Florence, Betty, Virginia, and Edith.
During the early years of the war, she worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. She shared a Jersey City apartment with three other young ladies, and they all befriended a group of sailers sharing an apartment in the same building. One particular dark-haired Texan caught her eye, and she married John Slifer Wilkinson on December 13, 1941. John spent much of the next few years on a naval patrol boat in the Atlantic. After their reunion, like so many other members of the Greatest Generation, they began a family. John Charles “Jack” was born November 7, 1945. The next month, Ginny followed John to his native Texas, which her mother apparently considered the end of the earth. Jack was followed by Robert Gordon “Bob” on May 1, 1948, and James Richard “Jim” on August 3, 1956. Prim and proper, but with a dry wit and bright smile, Ginny smoothed out the rough edges of her Texan husband and sons. In fact, spontaneous lessons on manners, grammar, common sense, and other various topics continued with grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the following decades. In addition to family, Ginny also enjoyed a career in the office of the School of Music at the University of Houston from the early sixties until the mid-eighties.
Virginia is survived by her sister, Edie; her sons Jack and his wife Tatiana and Bob and his wife Gwen, her daughter-in-law Karen, grandsons Constantine and his wife Julia and Bobby and his wife Lisa, granddaughters Stephanie and her husband Trae Compton and Kristin and her husband Ben Wescott, her great-granddaughter Kristina, and great-grandsons Trey, John, Art, and William. She is preceded in death by her husband John and son Jim.
Services will be held at 12:30 pm on January 2, 2017, at the South Park Funeral Home, 1310 N. Main, Pearland, TX 77581.
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