Virginia Muller White

Virginia M. White (nee Muller), 94, embraced the Lord on December 24, 2016. Married 55 years, she was the devoted and adored wife of Wallace J. White, Jr., who passed in 2003. Born August 13, 1922 in Baltimore, MD, she was the only child of Anna E. (nee Cunningham) and Robert H. Muller. Beginning in first grade, she attended the Institute of Notre Dame, graduating in 1940.

She was first married to Franklin H. Gees, Jr. in December 1944. His sudden death in 1946 left her a widow at the age of 24. As a secretary at the Koppers Company, she met the handsome, dimpled, brown-eyed Wally when she had to deliver technical drawings to the blueprint department. Enduring a long-distance romance, she in Baltimore and he at Catholic University on the GI bill, their love grew the old-fashioned way, through romantic love letters. She visited him at the American Legion where he tended bar to support himself while in college. They loved to jitterbug at Gwynn Oak Park. They were married on June 9, 1948.

She was a traditional, devoted, loving homemaker. Linda Marie (King) was born in 1951, but it was 10 long years before Virginia Anne (Lane) was born. Carol Jeanne (Etchison-Osborn) was born on Virginia’s 40th birthday. Virginia was 43 when Stephen Michael was born. She cried to her parish priest, afraid she would not live long enough to see him marry and have children of his own. With good genes and healthy living, she lived to love and welcome eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

She was “born to bowl,” enjoying duck pin then switching to ten pin, where she enjoyed the friendship and comradery of league friends until she was 90! As young kids, we knew it was Thursday night bowling because dinner was always hotdogs and beans. If she was feeling lucky, she wrapped the hotdogs with biscuit dough and called them “pigs in a blanket.” She also loved to play bingo. Good behavior and completed chores earned the coveted honor of joining mom for Monday night bingo and a brownie at St. Bernard’s Church in Riverdale.

She will be missed by Robert, Rob (Melissa) and Mary King (David Yost, Hannah Lynne); Richard, Catherine (Josh, Genevieve) Kruder and Elizabeth Lane; Carl Osborn and Montana Etchison; and Denese, Brittany, Brendan and Brianna White.

Viewings will be Thursday, 12/29/2016 from 3-5 PM and 7-9 PM at Witzke Funeral Homes, Inc., 5555 Twin Knolls Road, Columbia, MD. A Mass of Christian Burial will be celebrated Friday, 12/30/2016 at 10:30 AM at St. Mary of the Mills Catholic Church, 114 St. Mary’s Place, Laurel, MD 20707. Interment at Crest Lawn Cemetery in Marriottsville, MD.