She graduated from the University of Arizona in 1935 and had an active social and academic life while there, majoring in education, and belonging to the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She loved horses, and rode on university teams. It was there that she met Justin Gardner Smith, a.k.a. 'Deacon' to his friends, who was majoring in botany. He was president of the class of 1935, and was student body vice president in his senior year. He was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. She and Justin went often to see and stay with her grandparents on the ranch in Canelo. For several years after she graduated, she taught Spanish at Patagonia Union High School.

 In August 1938, she and Justin got married at St. Philips in the Hills, then on the outskirts of Tucson, and they spent their honeymoon driving around the West, riding into the Grand Canyon and visiting her father's family in Astoria, Oregon. She supported Justin as he got his M.S. in big game management at Utah State in Logan, Utah. In 1943, Justin shipped off to England in the Army Air Force a few months before their first son, Sig Corbin, was born; while Justin was away, Virginia lived in Tucson near her mother and began raising their son, sending a large number of photos to Justin so he could participate in his son's growing up.

 Justin returned from his war service to Tucson in 1945. His first job (which became his professional career) was as a research biologist for the US Forest Service in Ogden, Utah; the three of them moved there in 1946 in what must have been an emotional separation for her from the land and family she had always known. In Ogden they had their second son, Scott Gardner in 1947 and their third son Craig Eason in 1951.

 The move to Ogden was the first of three subsequent family moves in as Justin was transferred to new research stations in Boise, Idaho; Wenatchee, Washington; and La Grande, Oregon. In all the moves, she found joining in activities in the Presbyterian church a way to integrate herself and the family into the new communities. And for family vacations, they almost always returned to Arizona to see Justin's father Corb in Mesa and her mother Pauline in Tucson.

 In La Grande when Craig was going into junior high school, Virginia went back for several years to teaching, this time French and Spanish at La Grande high school. Justin retired in La Grande, and they moved to Boise to be near their second son, Scott Gardner and his family.

 They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 1988, and a litle less than two years later she died of ovarian cancer in Boise a few months after her 75th birthday.

Sig and Virginia on Trotsky

 
Pauline with Sig and Virginia at the ranch  Virginia and Justin at St. Philips in the Hills

Virginia, Pauline, Anna 1953

Written by her son Sig Corbin Smith

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