Virginia Davis Faulconer OBITUARY
Virginia Davis Faulconer OBITUARY
Virginia Davis Faulconer, 101, died Tuesday, August 27, at a local hospital. She was born in Williamsburg, Virginia, the daughter of Dr. Donald Walton Davis and Katherine Bressler Davis. Dr. Davis, who headed the Biology Department at the College of William and Mary, was the founder of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS). The importance of education was in her blood. The precision and discipline of growing up in an academic household shaped her thinking and served her well throughout her life.
“Bunny” as she was known to her friends was a graduate of St. Catherine’s School in Richmond, and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the College of William and Mary. During World War II, she graduated from the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.
In 1945 she married Hopkins medical student Robert Jamieson Faulconer. The couple eventually moved to Norfolk where he set up his medical practice with Dr. Arnold Strauss.
Settling in to Norfolk, she embraced each stage of her long life with enthusiasm. When her children were young, she enjoyed being a Brownie Scout troop leader in the neighborhood. From earliest childhood, Virginia had loved nature and animals of all kinds. This did not change, which resulted in the household occasionally harboring some unusual “pets,” as well as eggs fresh from the hen. She later became involved in charitable work, founding with two friends an organization that helped children with learning disabilities. Operating out of a storefront on Colley Avenue, this mini-school provided assistance with dyslexia. Still later she joined her friend Nancy Chandler, as a realtor at Nancy Chandler Associates, a career she loved and pursued until her mid-eighties.
She enjoyed her membership in the National Society of Colonial Dames in the Commonwealth of Virginia. She was honored that her ancestor, Simon Meredith, had played a role in American history by funding Benjamin Franklin’s first printing press.
Virginia was predeceased by her loving husband of 76 years, Robert Jamieson Faulconer, M.D., and by two of her children: John Edmund Pelham Faulconer and Mary-Waite Meredith Faulconer. She is survived by two daughters, Anne Mannington Faulconer Hurley, and Elizabeth Myrl Thatcher Faulconer, M.D., as well as son-in-law Geoffrey K. Hurley.
Now cracks a noble heart.
Good night, sweet lady
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest
A reception celebrating Virginia’s life will take place in the near future; date, time and place to be announced. Online condolences can be made to the family at hdoliver.com.
