Green, Virginia Ebba Olson - 1920-2012

AHMANSON, CARWARDINE, FELL, GILSON, GREEN, OLSON

Posted By: Diana Wagner
Date: 7/19/2024 at 19:14:46

Virginia Green, long-time resident of Perry, Iowa, died of heart failure on Thursday, March 8, at Town and Country Manor in Santa Ana, California. She was 91.
"The legacy of Virginia Olson Green bears tribute to what small town America has stood for in the last century," said Bill Clark, a family friend living in Perry, Iowa. "She was a multi-tasking super woman connecting people both locally and world-wide through her family, faith, work, teaching, and outreach."
Born Virginia Ebba Olson on July 18, 1920, in Des Moines Iowa, Virginia was the oldest of four children born to Arthur and Helen Olson. In 1932 the family moved to Perry, Iowa, where Arthur was the chief night dispatcher for the Milwaukee Railroad, which had its Iowa switching station in the town.
In 1938 Virginia graduated from Perry Community High School where she had been an honor roll student. For the next two years she studied home economics at Iowa State University (then College) in Ames, Iowa. In 1940 she returned to Perry, where she worked briefly for Woolworth's and then at the First National Bank.
At the bank, she quickly rose from cashier to head bookkeeper. She wrote a list of 64 services for the bank and was sent to Brenton Bank branches across the state to lead training seminars in customer service.
In 1941 Virginia professed her faith in Jesus Christ, was baptized, and joined the First Baptist Church in Perry, where she soon became church treasurer.
She married Earl Gustav Green on October 6, 1946, at the home of Earl's parents, Selma and Earl Edward Green. The couple honeymooned in New England. In 1949 their daughter, Roberta Elaine, was born.
With the birth of her daughter, Virginia resigned her bank post. However, she threw her considerable energy not only into her daughter but also into her community and her church.
In addition to serving as church treasurer for more than 30 years, Virginia also taught Sunday School, was president of the Afternoon Missionary Society and the White Cross. She also belonged to the Night Missionary Society, the L.G. Bible Class, and the Berean Sunday School Class. For more than 30 years, she produced the church bulletins on her mimeograph and sent them both to those who had missed services and to the missionaries the church supported around the world.
Outside the church, she was a member of Toastmistress, winning the state championship in the early 1950s for a speech about her courtship with Earl called "I Fell for a Prince But Married a Bad EGG." Beyond that, she belonged to the Book Club, the Dilettante Club, Perry Women's Club, and the Alpha Circle of King's Daughters, serving as president of several of them at one time or another.
In the 1960s and 70s Virginia also ran her own duplicating business, printing yearbooks, letters, design patterns, and other types of materials for various clubs, businesses, and associations in town.
A great cook, Virginia and Earl frequently entertained guests both from town and from out of town in their home. Virginia treasured two sets of crystal dishes and a set of 24 place-settings of silver, which she used to set beautiful tables.
Over the years the Greens traveled across the United States many times as well as to Mexico, where they loaded their camper truck on a flatbed train to see parts of the country they could have seen no other way. Later on, Virginia traveled to Europe and to South America with her daughter and her family. Everywhere she went, she met new people and quickly added them to her address list. Just this past December, she sent her annual Christmas letter (a project she started in the 1950s) to more than 1,000 people.
In 1981, Virginia was run over by a meat truck in the Fareway Grocery Store parking lot across from her house. The vehicle ran over only her legs, but her life was never the same. She lived with pain and difficulties of many kinds. In her Bible she wrote that Psalm 46:1 came to her as the truck went over her. It says: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." That verse summarizes Virginia's life-long faith.
Roberta married Howard Ahmanson in 1986, and the Greens moved to California in 1989 to be close to their daughter and son-in-law and, particularly, their grandson, David, born in 1987. Earl died in 1991, but Virginia went on to support her family and her church for another 20 fruitful years. She moved into Town and Country Manor in 2006 after a series of surgeries.
Virginia was preceded in death by her husband Earl Gustav Green, her parents Arthur and Helen Olson, her sister Mildred Fell, her brother Edwin Olson, and her mother-in-law and father-in-law Selma and Earl Edward Green.
She is survived by her daughter, Roberta Green Ahmanson, her son-in-law Howard Fieldstad Ahmanson, both of Corona del Mar, California; her grandson David Fieldstad Green Ahmanson, a student at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan; her sister, Dorothy Gilson of Houston and Kingsland, Texas; her nephew Harold Gilson and his wife Juli of Kingsland, Texas; her niece Mary Carwardine and her husband Peter of Calgary, Alberta.
Her funeral was on Tuesday, March 13, at Liberty Baptist Church, Newport Beach, California. Interment will be at Pacific View Memorial Park in Corona del Mar, California.
In lieu of flowers, please send donations to either Liberty Baptist Church, 1000 Bison Avenue, Newport Beach, California 92660, for the church's building fund for a new gymnasium and education complex for its day school, or to the Orange County Rescue Mission for the Village of Hope, a residence for homeless families, One
Published in Des Moines (IA) Register; Sunday, March 18, 2012, page 7B