Light-filled neighbor Ginny Craig passed away on Christmas morning, age 78, after a multiple year battle with ovarian cancer. When it came back for the third time she had had enough. And oh, have the city lights dimmed.
The Hill & Lake Press neighborhoods knew her well, after she and husband Will Craig moved onto Sheridan Avenue in 1971 to live and work (Will at the U) and raise their two children, son Josh and daughter Jessie. She taught middle schoolers for seven years, and Ginny’s greatest love was education, says Will, adding that no volunteer activity was safe from Ginny’s energy and enthusiasm.
But the best for our Hill & Lake Press community was when she volunteered for the Hill & Lake Press as a writer and to take part in our wild and woolly and hilarious layout sessions back when the media were rubber cement, IBM typewriter typescript and Letraset rub-on headlines.
Many a late night dining room session was leavened by Ginny’s energy and enthusiasm and kickass sense of humor, and of course her writing and editing chops, which she later parlayed into positions with the park board and the Minneapolis public schools communication department. When she took on the mantle of volunteer Hill & Lake Press editor it was more of the same, the paper filled with neighborhood and school news and humor, on time and on budget (if we had a budget).
Ginny Craig lit up the room. Yes, she was a daughter of Austrian immigrants and a radiant beauty, the pride of Little Canada, but that wasn’t it. It was her laugh, her bright eyes, her inclusive personality. You wanted to be working with her and her infectious energy ‘til three in the morning. Or running the Minneapolis public schools YES campaign for the successful public school referendum. Or raising scholarship money with the American Association of University Women (AAUW), of which she was once president. Or you wanted to improve city parks by rebuilding the Lake Harriet band shell and adding restful benches around city parks, two of her projects as executive director of People for Parks (now Minneapolis Parks Foundation).
We are all going to the Yellow Springs at the end of this life, as the Chinese say, and Ginny dealt with that better than most. We will meet her again at the Great Layout Session in the Sky for more hilarious and productive confab, many more good works, and a good cry for our beloved neighborhoods much ennobled by her angelic presence and diminished by her earthly absence.
The last public education project Ginny nailed was at the AAUW, where for four years she headed the college scholarship program that currently supports 13 female Minneapolis public schools alumnae with four years, $4,000 per year scholarships plus a mentor for their entire college career. At the annual AAUW fundraiser just this past November 11, she raised $16,500 in scholarship donations.
A memorial service for Virginia Sherman Craig will be held at the Gale Mansion, home of the AAUW, this spring, date TBD. Watch this space. It is righteous to assume that we attendees will be tapped for donations to public education, and we will dig deep.
