Neva Johnson Herrington

Neva Herrington, age 97, passed away on January 10, 2024 after a brief hospital stay in Woodbridge, Virginia. She was born in New London, Connecticut on March 31, 1926, the second daughter of J. Reid Johnson and Neva Palmer Johnson.

In 1944 she graduated from Ashley Hall Preparatory School in Charleston, South Carolina. She married naval officer Rodger Bosworth Herrington of Binghamton, New York in 1945, shortly before the end of WWII.

While raising her family, she attended college part-time at Connecticut College in New London and Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, where she earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees.

A gifted writer and an enthusiastic teacher, she published widely and taught at a number of schools. While a full-time faculty member at Williams School in New London, she was voted teacher of the year by her appreciative students. In subsequent years, she was a full-time teacher at Northern Virginia Community College, and later taught part-time at Randolph Macon College and Sweet Briar College in Virginia, and at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas.

Poetry was overwhelmingly her favored form of expression, although she occasionally turned to fiction and critical articles. Her work appeared in a number of national magazines including Commonweal, Southwest Review, and The Southern Review. Her first book, Blue Stone and Other Poems (1986) was the Pushcart Foundation selection for “Writer’s Choice. Three other works of acclaimed poetry followed: a chapbook Her BMW in 2007, Open Season in 2015, and Among the Absent in 2019. Neva never stopped writing. She was engaged in her poetry right up to the end.

She was a Fellow at Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. As a volunteer she worked for the Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic in Charlottesville, Virginia, and tutored for the Northern Virginia Literacy Council. She was a member of the Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Neva was preceded in death by her sisters Anne Johnson Banks and Dianne Capers Johnson. Her daughter Elizabeth died in 1994.

She is survived by her sister, Reida Johnson Kimmel, by her son Philip and daughter-in-law Jill;

and daughter Anne (Herrington) Boyer and son-in-law Robert; grandchildren Madeleine Boyer, Margaret Boyer Liftik, and Nathaniel Boyer, M.D. Also surviving are four great-grandchildren and numerous nieces and nephews.

A Funeral Mass for Neva will be held at Saint Mary’s Basilica in Alexandria Virginia on Friday, February 9th at 10:30am.

In lieu of flowers please make a donation to Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers Catholic Charities, Doctors Without Borders or a charity of your choice.