Virginia Lee Lacouture

Virginia Lee Lacouture passed away suddenly on Friday, December 8, 2006. She would have turned 82 on January 19th. Our mother Virginia was the youngest girl of nine children born to Marie Thielepape and Daniel Adamson. She was raised in and around Austin where her father was a sharecropper who brought his vegetables by wagon to the 6th street farmers market in downtown Austin. During World War II she quit school at Austin High and went to East Texas to work as a welder on ships being built for the war. There she met the Cajun family of Gene Lacouture. She began corresponding with Gene by mail and they married six weeks after he returned from the war. She realized her childhood dream of traveling when Gene continued his military career and for twenty-five years they raised their family in Germany, France, Turkey, Texas and Florida. They took their children off base frequently to see such sights as the tulip fields and windmills in Holland, the passion plays of Oberammergau Germany, deep Turkish caves where early Christians hid by the Mediterranean Sea, The French Riviera and the grand cities of Paris, Rome, Munich, Istanbul and Jerusalem. During those years our mother worked as a bookkeeper, ran her sons Cub Scout Troops and made her daughter’s clothes. She was a beautiful seamstress who could look at clothing or upholstery and then make her own patterns. She returned to school to complete her High School education and at the age of 50 she graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the University of Nevada. After our father's death she and her faithful friend Richard Howe made a life together. During those years she fished Lake Mead and Lake Austin, danced at Dessau Hall, played dominoes and 42, cared for her brother James and later for her sister Lola. She worked for Consumer Credit Counseling, made beautifully detailed needlepoint pictures and regularly put flowers on the graves of her loved ones. Popcorn, playing Bridge, watching the food channel, Danielle Steel books, TV murder mysteries, studying Spanish, listening to the music of the Three Tenors, Jimmie Gilmore and her daughter Marce, and daily talks full of laughter with her life long friend Martin Ayres were the ways she spent her most recent days. She raised her children Gene (Corky), Marcy (Marce) and Dan to be independent thinkers who like her would care for justice and those less fortunate. She is survived by her children Gene, Marce and Dan Lacouture, sisters Lola Burgess and Emma Bull, sisters-in-law Donnie Woods and Lavoyce Adamson, daughters-in-law Pam Lacouture and Carol Wagner, grand children Nicole Richard, Ryan Lacouture, Martel Guest, Calle and Emma Lacouture, three great grand children Chase Richard, newborn twins Zachary and Abigail Guest and by her dear friends Martin Ayres, Mary Blackmon, Anita Filyaw and Georganna Bell. We hold her in our love and laughter forever. The family will receive friends from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. on Tuesday, December 12th at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home. Graveside services will follow at 1:30 p.m. at Assumption Cemetery. Donations in her name may be made to a charity of your choice.