La Vonne Irene Virbila

Longtime Fullerton resident LaVonne Virbila died at her home on November 13, 2018. She was 95. A Nebraskan who grew up on a farm, LaVonne wasn’t much for girl’s work like peeling potatoes or plucking chickens. She wanted to be outside working with her brothers. A high school graduate at 15, she taught in one-room schoolhouses until she heard on the radio that the Marine Corps was recruiting women during WWII.       She didn’t get her dream job—driving generals around Europe. (Never mind that she didn’t know how to drive.) Her assignment was in Washington, D.C., teaching English by mail to young soldiers overseas. Her future husband, John P. Virbila, sat right behind her. He taught math.They married in 1946 in Connecticut. A daughter, Sherry Irene, was born the next year and a second daughter, Kay LaVonne, 3-1/2 years later in Nebraska.             In 1955, the family moved to Fullerton and LaVonne fell in love with California and the ocean. An obsessive reader all her life, she visited the Fullerton Public Library often and always had a stack of books beside her bed.             When her daughters were young, the neighborhood kids all came over to play—and for her homemade doughnuts rolled in sugar and especially for her giant chocolate chip cookies. When she retired in 1991, a few years after her husband died, her fellow employees at Cal State Fullerton, where she was an admissions counselor for teacher education programs, chipped in to buy her a ticket to Hawaii. Through the years, she continued to read widely, treasured her two grandkids and lived by herself up until she died, independent and feisty to the very end.             She will be greatly missed by her daughters Sherry Irene Virbila and Kay LaVonne Virbila, her grandchildren Gabe Virbila and Madalena Virbila and her great grandchild Brock Barre.    A short service will be held at Riverside National Cemetery, Staging Area A, on November 26 at 11:15 a.m. In lieu of flowers, contributions can be made to https://foundationforwomenwarriors.org which supports women veterans.