Remembering Virginia and Van

Virginia Gantt was a latecomer to my late Aunt Mildred Rippy’s circle of friends we called "the Girls," who had breakfast together at Hardees every Tuesday morning for several decades. Mary Trucks, Aunt Mildred’s friend since their childhood, brought Virginia and she brought Ruth Wallace sometime after Fran and I joined the group. Virginia spent her last days at White Oak in Tryon; Ruth is still living there, and is sharp of mind and in remarkably good health at 99 years of age.

Virginia was the widow of James Gantt, who headed up Tryon High School when my younger brother Bill continued there after I graduated in 1947. I never knew Mr. Gantt, but Bill and his accomplice, er, I mean friend, became well acquainted with Mr. Gantt during numerous visits to his office. They always promised to do better, but I suppose their preference for outdoor activities soon took them out of the un-air conditioned classrooms of the day.

I cannot count the number of people who have mentioned to me that Virginia was their piano teacher. Just last week Shirley Edwards was telling me that if Virginia played a new piece for her, she picked it up by ear, and thus did not learn to really read musical scores until she was in high school: Virginia stopped playing the pieces for her when assigned.

Virginia always came to breakfast well-dressed and coifed to perfection, a Southern lady all the way. She spoke proper English in well-modulated tones, except when she would comment that the real butter in the cookies made them "more better," hers eyes twinkling as she enjoyed her mischievous observation. Attractively slim until the end, she watched her diet too carefully, some of us thought. She usually resisted the sweets some of the ladies brought, but would sometimes taste "just one little one," I suppose to be "polite."

When I started writing these columns, Mary Trucks commented one day that she was clipping them and putting them in a scrapbook. Virginia piped up, "I’m not. I’ll just wait for the book to come out." So naturally I gave Virginia her copy of "A Boy in the Amen Corner," dedicated to "The Girls," first!

We later comers to the group decided to continue to meet after the original five "Girls" passed away and Hardees closed. The Girls started something good and therefore have left a permanent legacy.

One Bernard A. Van Vlaenderen saw the signs we put up in Columbus and appeared at one of our Lions meetings, rarin’ to go! He had been an active Lion in California, and we put him to work right away. As Lion Secretary, I had to learn to spell his name, but for everyone else he was just "Van." He and Ellen soon had the whole Lion crew over to their home for a meeting, where we dined well and visited a basement workshop overflowing with his wood creations.

Van was an artist in wood who had mastered the jig saw in producing his works in tarsia (or intarsia, wherein pieces of different colored wood are inlaid on a backing to form a picture or geometric pattern). His horses and foxes were especially delightful as they sprang to life in his skilled hands. Of course Ellen was the love of his life, but I cannot say whether it was tarsia or singing with Community Chorus and his church choir that was second. But Van certainly had the soul of an artist, and made a host of friends in Our Area, who miss his smiling countenance wherever good fellowship prevails.