Virginia Ruth Day

 Virginia Ruth Day was born August 11, 1927, and grew up in Clarke County, Ala. She passed away July 5, 2026, at the age of 98. 

Her parents were Ruth Garrick Day and Grover Cleveland Day. She is preceded in death by her first cousin, Walter Steele Patton III and her aunts, Anne Garrick Patton, Lily Garrick and Nettie Garrick Rockwell. She is survived by her cousins, Rose Mary Patton, Thomas M. Patton (Amy), Laura Bailey Pinke, Ellen Garrick Patton Robb (Richard), and Rachel Patton Harrison (Will).

 She had many fond memories of a country life childhood. She had a pony as a girl and she rode a school bus that was a farm truck with benches in back. She remembered the Great Depression and knew the value of being able to grow, raise, and harvest one's own food. Her father owned the mercantile in Gosport, Ala. He also ran the post office from one corner of it. On Friday nights he would project movies onto feed sacks in the mercantile.

 She attended school in Gosport until she was 16. Virginia, and, a short time later, her mother, Ruth, moved to Fairhope when Grover died. She joined her grandfather and aunts who came from Scyrene, Clarke County, Ala. to Fairhope in the 1920s. She graduated from Fairhope High School in 1945.

She lived near Knoll Park around 50 years before buying a patio home for her retirement in the early 1990s. She remembered when Mobile Bay was much clearer than today. She would recall being able to walk to the end of the pier and see the bottom of the Bay.

Aunt Virginia worked as a bookkeeper for many years for a trucking line company in Mobile and later for a utilities company. Virginia, a third generation Fairhopian, volunteered in the 1990s at the Fairhope Welcome Center. She was a voracious reader, often reading seven novels a week. Her favorite authors were Anne McCaffrey and Isaac Asimov.

  She selflessly donated her body to University of South Alabama School of Medicine. Memorials can be made to Fairhope Public Library.