Virginia (Culver) Snyder was a dedicated reporter, a lifelong Democrat, a friend for all seasons, a reformed tomboy, and a beloved, irascible aunt. Her wit was as dry and scorching as summer on the Colorado Plains – making her the one everyone wanted to sit by at any gathering. In that she was a lot like my dad (both of them would shoot me for saying that) – she loved a group, loved make people laugh. She didn’t hog the spotlight, she just did have better jokes. No one skewered a Republican, a hypocrite or an editor like our Virginia. She was a social person wrapped around a recluse with an expensive chocolate habit.

She was my Dad’s little sister, born in Lamar, Colorado, in 1941, and raised in Eads.

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She was named for her own aunt, Virginia Moffatt, who was a Women Airforce Service Pilot ferrying planes during World War II: inspirational in her own right. Virginia Moffatt died serving the country soon after our Virginia was born.

Our Virginia loved sports, music and school, in that order. But her friend Betty said the teachers didn’t like her, “because she asked questions that were hard to answer.” She was a reporter before even she knew it. She wrote that when she faced the fact that she was “never going to be first baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers, or director of the NY Philharmonic,” she went to CU-Boulder to study journalism. In 1967 she took a job at The Denver Post, and met her future husband John C. Snyder, the City Desk Editor. At her first paper, her wedding occasioned the headline: “Lamar Daily News Editor Marries Denver Man.”

She started out writing articles on women’s clubs – where all women reporters were stuck – but lobbied hard for her own beat. Then she protested when they gave her the religion beat. But she took it on and excelled for three decades, winning awards for secular religion reporting and the nickname “God” in the newsroom. She said she “covered liars, witches, wife beaters, criminals, thieves, beggars, new agers–and those were just the clergy.”

Virginia also liked to say, “I have been kicked out of a lot of nice churches.” But in truth she had an amazing career and she got in to a lot of places reporters hadn’t been before. She interviewed the stars: Billy Graham, Mother Theresa, Dalai Lama, Pope John Paul II. She gave a lot of credit for her scoops to someone she called her “leaky priest” – a source she had for years. Her datelines came from Israel, Rome, Morocco, all over the U.S., across all denominations and social issues of the day.

We had a memorial for her in October at the Denver Press Club, where I’m sure she’d downed a lot of red wine with (ack) ice. One of our speakers, Kansas City NPR reporter (and truly brilliant, gorgeous human being) Peggy Lowe said, “In fact I wanted to be just like her. She was a helluva journalist, this audacious person always cooking up some caper. And she was a woman navigating this man’s world, with her “take no prisoners” attitude. And I wanted to learn how to do that.” One of her former editors said she would tell him how she wanted to write her story, and then ask, “Wouldn’t you agree?” “She was what a tough newspaper man or woman should be like,” he said. Another reporter recalled a visit to a buffalo ranch where the cowboy in charge said, “We can drive those buffalo wherever they want to go – which reminded me of Virginia.”

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She was a reporter even outside of work. She grilled us whenever there was a medical issue, a job change, a break-up or a new person in one of our lives. She told us to ask more questions if we didn’t have the answers she wanted. Or she’d tell us, “Just the facts, ma’am.” She was a role model for Kyna and for me: like Mary Tyler Moore! Once, she told Kyna to “outlive” a supervisor Kyna hated – in effect saying we were tougher than the jerks that bedeviled us. We saw her clips from the paper: if she could do THAT, what could WE do?

Her job was her passion and her pride. She was crazy about her husband, John, but sadly he died of heart disease after just four years of marriage. She lost her father that same year. I think those losses made her life at the Post all the more important to her – she worked hard and built her life around those friends. As my sister describes it, we were a tiny sliver of her life, compared to this chosen family. Her crews were special. They teamed up to take care of their elderly parents in COPE, took “roots” trips together with The Magnificent Seven. Looked out for each other, calling out the limits of a man’s world and making their collective way around it.

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Christmas

Virginia came to St. Louis every Christmas, with Grandma Hilda in one or another American-made prairie schooner. She called me and my sister The Belles.

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As opposite to her mother as she could be, Virginia never cooked except Christmas Eve: she heated up clam chowder from a can. Christmas morning, my brother and I would scuttle back and forth in front of her bedroom door, trying to wake her up without pissing off our parents. We knew she was sort of tolerating us… we saw how early she started drinking the eggnog. But eventually she would festoon us in bows, ribbons and gift wrap – which we never seemed to get tired of, as documented by our Christmas photos year after year after year.

After college, I was in Denver and got some freelance writing assignments: I imagined I’d be a reporter like her. I thought maybe she’d get me a job at the Post! She was… unenthusiastic. For my part, I was woefully uninformed about the newspaper business, but Virginia waited till I was heading in a different direction to give me a steer. I had written a draft of a novel, so she corralled a friend of hers to edit my book and offer suggestions, and by “a friend” I mean a professional editor.

Brother and sister

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The relationship between Dad and Virginia was never easy, but near the ends of their lives they finally did show us how much they loved each other, and how their shared upbringing made them two peas in a pod, including the devastation of losing their sister Margaret. How Eads shaped them and made them both fight for the little guy, even when they saw that fight differently. Virginia and Dad spoke daily for the last several years of his life, and when he could no longer talk, she called us kids. She let us vent, cheered us on, and sent gift cards – though she was grieving as well. We went to Eads together to bury Dad, and for me, that was the first time I saw Virginia falter.

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A reporter to the end

After a long career, a half-assed, inexperienced, crappy private equity firm bought out the paper and tried to convince Virginia to retire – by shunting her to the obituary desk. Instead, she stayed on nine more years, writing dozens and dozens of poignant, creative, balanced stories. She used her extensive network to identify people to profile: her “leaky priest,” one assumes, but also all the other clergy members she knew after a life on the beat. Like she used to grill us about any topic, I can imagine her asking them, “But who do you have for me?”

She had the occasional bigwig of one type or another, but said: “The nightclub singers, gun-runners, quilt makers and trumpet players are more fun.” No one could put a life on the page with dignity and candor better than her, whether it was a beloved music teacher, an isolated person cut off from family, or a Colorado artist. In going through Virginia’s letters, dozens of families thanked her for writing their loved ones’ stories.

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After Virginia died, Susan Greene wrote Virginia’s obituary in the Post – in my opinion, worthy of Virginia’s own work. The fantastic photo on that obit comes from Virginia’s retirement party. Peggy Lowe, who knew Virginia so well, said, “She seemed genuinely surprised that so many people were there for her,” which shows Virginia could, actually, be vulnerable. When she spoke (infrequently) about her late husband, John, according to Peggy, “There was a softness that came over her when she spoke about him…. I think she grieved him till the day she died.” Peggy, Susan, Bonnie, Diane, and others from Virginia’s chosen family saw sides of Virginia we kids rarely, or never, did.

During the last two years, Virginia went from fruity to surly to taciturn to downright mean – and sometimes back again – even, or especially, with the people who loved her most. She insisted on driving. She wasn’t taking care of herself. We came back for visits and found her in sordid conditions, with raccoons in the attic and a hole in the roof of her living room that went clear through to the sky. At one point she asked us, “So when are you all leaving?” Another time she asked if we were there for her money. Then she asked what kind of chocolate we’d bought her. Not if we’d bought her chocolate, but what kind.

She was furious at us for trying to foist in-home help on her, emptying out her science fair of a refrigerator, and hiding her car keys. It wasn’t a surprise to see her being mean, only to see her directing it at us. She was not “a softie at heart,” she was not cuddly, she did not coo at babies. She didn’t care if you liked her, never asked for approval. She was truly tough. This made it awfully hard to take care of her, but we weren’t leaving her alone, either. I guess we’re tough too, because no matter what she threw at us, between we three kids, we kept coming back, cleaning her kitchen, haranguing her doctors and caretakers, and staying by her side till the end.

After retirement, in the last years of her life, she said she was writing articles about what happens after you die, or about the inner workings of assisted living facilities. To us, that looked like a reporter’s impartiality and curiosity, brought to bear on what was new and frightening in her life. And if she had lasted a little longer, we would have moved her into those other facilities one after the other, to satisfy her curiosity and her drive.

One of her colleagues, photojournalist Kenn Bisio, wrote of her passing: “I can see St. Peter at the Pearly Gates taking a step aside while exclaiming, “Clear the way. She has an interview with the Almighty.’”

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We’re going to miss you. Fare thee well, Virginia Belle.