Virginia M. Daniels

is honored with a Premium Paver from Molly Daniels, Abby Daniels, Lucy Daniels, and Wm. C. Daniels, Jr.

Mother, friend, earth rim roamer, counselor, wife, linguist, musician, polymath, painter, cancer survivor, etc. Her legacy to all who knew her was her infectious genius for finding and reveling in the essential human dignity at the core of all people.

Virginia M. Daniels was born in 1925 in Wichita, Kansas and died there in 1991. She was the daughter of Dr. Hale E. and Edna A. Marshall. She attended Hyde, Robinson and East High schools in Wichita. She graduated from Northwestern University with a B.A. in 1947 and from Wichita State University with a M.A. in 1967.

Virginia married William C. Daniels of Wichita in 1948. She was mother of Abby Anne, born in 1957; Molly Anne, born in 1956; Lucy Anne, born in 1950; and William C., Jr. born in 1949. She was grandmother of Madeline Renee Daniels, born in 1988, and Gillian Marshall Smith, born in 1985.

She was a teacher and classroom principal at the Institute of Logopedics in Wichita before beginning a career as a counselor at Wichita State University. Virginia also taught, developed curricula and authored many university publications.

Virginia was an inveterate traveler. Indeed, travel is a powerful metaphor for her journey through life. She opened the wide world beyond Wichita and Kansas to those who knew her. She traveled to scores of countries and made landfall on six of the seven continents.

Although she traveled widely, Virginia never met a foreigner. She instantly recognized what was common to us all despite an individual's background, nationality, race, origin, or religion. She taught others, through her own contagious, enthusiastic example, to find what was precious and vital in each human being. She saw and responded to that essence in everyone she met: whether spouse of a world leader, boatman in Amazonia, person with profound developmental disabilities, academy award winner, teenage boy on a Roman street corner, or corporate attorney struck speechless by stroke.

If Virginia's relentless wanderlust, driven by her sharp intelligence and voracious curiosity serves as a metaphor for her life, it is important to understand that she traveled not to see new vistas but to meet new people. Her instinctive impulse to include brought many people back to Wichita and the Wichita State University community.

All her children share her youngest daughter's conviction that Virginia belongs in any tribute to heroines. It is suitable for others to chose Elizabeth I, Madame Curie, Emily Dickinson, Harriett Tubman, Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart or other women as heroines (none of whom ever drove a dozen or so college coeds across the mountain spine of the Peloponesian Peninsula in a Volkswagen microbus during a blizzard). To her children, Virginia Marshall Daniels is their heroine. They may not be sure where heaven is and they may not know what language the angels speak, but they know that their heroine is there. She is making friends with strangers and continuing to inspire with the lessons of her life.

April 22, 1999