In Memory
APACHE JUNCTION, Ariz. - Virginia B. Trail died on February 2, 2023, at her home in Apache Junction, Ariz., of pancreatic cancer. She was 89 years of age. Virginia was born at home on July 8, 1933, in rural Hitchcock County, Neb.,to Doane O. and Frances M. (Hoyt) Trail. She and her extended family attended services at the old Stone Church south of Culbertson. She was later baptized into the Christian faith at Memorial United Methodist Church in McCook. She attended country schools in Hitchcock and Red Willow counties through the eighth grade and then McCook High School, graduating in 1950. She was a Bison cheerleader and was very successful on the debate team. After graduation, she attended Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln. Virginia married Bill Stearns in 1954 and they moved to Bellingham, Wash.. While there, she attended Western Washington University, studying anthropology. Two daughters, Frances and Mary, were born in Washington before moving to southern California, where Virginia worked in the aerospace industry editing technical manuals for the Atlas missile program. She married Charles Kimball in California and their son, Michael, was born there in 1961. Virginia worked in the advertising and printing fields while raising her children. In 1975, she married Vernon Tweedie in El Cajon, Calif. They lived in southern California and later in Nebraska at McCook and Hastings. Her husband became a high school teacher and they moved to the Navajo Nation in Arizona near the Four Corners. After eleven years of teaching on the reservation, they retired to their home at Apache Junction. Virginia’s diverse interests included driving and racing sports cars, an interest shared with her son, Michael. She volunteered at a suicide prevention hotline in California for several years and in archaeology projects with the U.S. Forest Service in Arizona. She did ethnographic work with elderly Navajo people on the reservation. She always had cats or dogs (often both) as beloved pets. She was preceded in death by her parents, her younger brother Tom, and her daughter, Frances Argo. She is survived by her husband, Vernon, children Mary Nash-Pyott and Michael Kimball, her sister Margaret Nielsen, brother Dick Trail, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. A celebration of life will be held at the Stone Church at 4:00 p.m. on Sat. May 27, 2023. Inurnment will follow at the Grove Cemetery.
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