Virginia Georgine Blackwell died peacefully at Claremont’s Mt. San Antonio Gardens Magnolia Grove on January 26. She was 97 years old.

She was born February 22, 1921 in Morris, Minnesota, the fourth child of Clara Julia Rolstad and Reuben Kornelius Johnson.

Young Virginia married Walter Lee Blackwell, Jr. on October 4, 1943 in Chicopee, Massachusetts. After World War II, they lived in Indiana and Texas. In 1958, they moved the family, which by then included a son, Walter, and a daughter, Karen, to Claremont, where she lived happily for the next 60 years.

Ms. Blackwell was predeceased by her husband, Walter Lee Blackwell, Jr., and her son and daughter-in-law, Maureen and Walter Lee Blackwell, III.

She is survived by her daughter and son-in-law, Karen and James T. Schaefer; three grandchildren and their spouses, Kara and JR Jones, Kristin and James Schaefer, Jr., and Janis and Jeromy Birket; and five great-grandchildren, Buck Jones, Sage Jones, Levi Schaefer, Isabella Birket and Mitchell Birket.

A private internment at Oak Park Cemetery in Claremont was held in February.