Virginia Louise Feather

My mother had a remarkable life. She had a very humble beginning on November 9, 1928, in Tecumseh, Oklahoma.  She was actually pronounced dead at birth but revived by Aunt Annie on her father's side. The family moved to New Mexico in desperation to homestead in Quemado.  They lived in a sod house.  If you have ever been to Quemado, homesteading seems impossible, and it was.  The family moved to Mogollon, NM, a remote gold and silver mining town in the Gila Mountains.  She grew up there and had perfect attendance at Reserve High School, which was an hour away by truck down the mountain and then by school bus.  Her commute and attendance were so extraordinary, The Saturday Evening Post wrote an article about her.

Next was higher education at New Mexico State University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Education and met Frank B. Feather, her husband of 58 years, in Las Cruces.  She student-taught in Bayard, NM, a year before they were married.  They both ran a farm, nursery, and repair service for air-cooled engine fans used to blow over ice on refrigerated tractor-trailers.  They had me in 1953, and then we all moved to Socorro, back to Las Cruces, and ended up in Albuquerque.  As I entered 6 ^th grade in Albuquerque, she resumed teaching, first as a substitute, then as a full-time home economics teacher at Highland High School.  The family had a great opportunity to live in Lima, Peru, when my father took a job with USAID from 1968 to 1970.  Life-changing for all of us.  She learned Spanish, took an interest in Indigenous artifacts, made many friends, and traveled. Returning to Albuquerque, she resumed teaching, retiring in 1988 after 26 years.

She was active in the Garden Club.  She organized seminars throughout the years with local and national landscape architects.  The seminars upgraded the garden clubs and were well attended.  After retirement, she was active with other home economics teachers in lobbying the state legislators for support of home economics education at both the university and high school levels.  She cooked, wrote, gardened, painted, and loved animals, from hummingbirds to cats and dogs.  She also loved people.  She made an impression and influenced people in different ways.

My mother was Virginia Louise Feather.  She died after a good life of 94 years on Sunday, March 26, 2023.  She outlived her father, Tolbert James (Shorty) Lyon; her mother, Louise F. Lyon; her brother, Tolbert James (Jimmy) Lyon Jr.; and her spouse Frank B. Feather.  She leaves behind her son, Tolbert Feather; daughter-in-law, Maria Barbosa; granddaughters, Claudia Nogueira and Cristina Feather; grandson-in-law, Bic Cung; and 3 great-grandsons, Atticus Cung, Tennyson Cung, and Beckett Cung.  We love you, Mama, Grandma, and Great-Grandma.  You will be missed.

Thank you all that devoted yourselves to supporting Virginia's passing in her own home.  She was fortunate to have all of you.