Virginia James Fann

Virginia Lee James Fann was born minutes ahead of her identical twin, Martha Elizabeth, on December 30, 1933, at the hospital in Newton, Mississippi. She was the oldest of five children born to Bernice Lee James and Cora Elizabeth (Allen) James. She passed away at age 91 on January 11, 2025.

She was born into a loving, encouraging, and nurturing family. Her parents owned a small 40-acre farm in Montrose, MS, with no running water or electricity because those utilities would not come to their town until she was 16. She had fond memories of helping her grandfather round up the cows and milk them. But she never liked the chickens because they pecked at her. In high school, she was an aggressive basketball player and, whenever she fouled out, she would trade jerseys with her twin at halftime to continue playing.

Both her parents believed passionately in the value of a good education. Although they had no cash to spare, they helped her and her siblings surmount what was lacking in their early rural Mississippi educational opportunities. Because she loved science, her father got a seat on the school board so that they would hire the school’s first chemistry teacher; he also gave her, her twin, and her older brother an acre of land to grow cotton to harvest and sell to help pay for college. She attended Jasper County Junior College before transferring to Springhill College, a rigorous Jesuit institution, to study chemistry. She was the only woman in most of her classes. She graduated with honors in 1955 and enrolled in medical school at Tulane University, but decided after a year that she would rather be a chemist. She soon started working at International Paper Company in Mobile. She was enduringly proud that she was the first woman chemist employed there.

During college, Ginny met her husband, William E. (Ed) Fann, when he came wearing his Air Force uniform into the store where she worked as a soda jerk. She immediately knew he was the man she would marry “when she had time.” (Please note, he was the only guy she dated whom she never swapped out with her twin, not least because he was the only man who could be bothered to tell them apart!) He says he could tell the twins apart because she was the one who looked at him quite that way.

Ginny and Ed married on May 31, 1958. He graduated a year later from the University of Alabama Medical School. Back then, it was almost impossible for a married woman to keep outside employment. So, even though she had profound regrets about leaving the job she loved, she gave up her career when Ed found an exciting job opportunity in a small-town medical practice in Opelika (near Auburn, Alabama). Ed soon switched his career to academic medicine, which would take them to Birmingham, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, and Durham, North Carolina, before they finally settled in Houston in 1974. She often said that the most lastingly satisfying measure of her life was her marriage and her rearing three children, born in a three-year span, all of them capable, achieving, and contributing much to society. By the time of her death, she and Ed had been married for more than 66 years.

Ginny was a diligent and gifted financial manager for the family. She was also a talented and inventive cook, baker, and sewist, and she passed on her skill and love for these activities to her daughters and their friends. Once she became an empty-nester, her sewing skills increased steadily: in addition to a wide range of garments, she made wedding dresses and bridesmaid outfits for her daughters’ weddings, and won recognition locally in print for her amazing work. She served on the local YMCA board when her children swam on those teams. She was active in Baylor Wives and volunteered for decades as a cook in the kitchen of her church, Memorial Drive Presbyterian. She started exercising diligently in her 50s, walking four miles most days or working out on a ski machine. She signed up for the first-ever 64-story Transco Tower Stair Run, placing second in her age group (and repeated that feat for a few years afterward). She was a lifelong avid reader, consuming two to five print books a week until macular degeneration and glaucoma led her to switch to audiobooks.

She was fiercely independent and, as soon as she could, spent as much of her leisure as possible traveling, literally to the ends of the earth. Having grown up penniless, she knew how to make do with less in almost any situation. She possessed great warmth, joy, kindness, and generosity of spirit, which meant she valued connecting with people from all walks of life, something she continued even in her last decade of life, despite increasing health restrictions.

Ginny and Ed had three children–or six if you count their in-laws (which she did). Eddie and his wife, Terri; Patricia and her husband, Peter; and Alice and her husband, Alex. They also had five grandchildren: Michael, Elizabeth, Carmen, Nicolas, and Cristian.