On May 19, 1972, not long after that gala dedication of the Life Science Center at Notre Dame University, Virginia responded to a letter from her twenty-six-year-old nephew, Paul:

Dearest Paul,

Your beautifully worded letter, remarking so sensitively on Dedication Day at Notre Dame, reached me today. No comment I have received on that wonderful day meant quite as much. You do understand what all of this means to me and why. I am totally assured when I read your words: "As we've said before, it is great joy to share in the good things that are being accomplished in our day, to push aside the Vietnam War,the civil disturbances of our cities. When I share with you in these good things, I feel greatly lifted and inspired. All of us who shared in the Dedication of the Life Science Center were spiritually renewed." This is all a part of the privilege it is to have the stewardship of charitable funds, the unparalleled joy of giving toward the betterment of mankind. It does, indeed, quicken my heart to reflect upon the miracles, the wonderful mysteries which may be solved in our Life Science Center, an awesome thought. You and I must talk together about the projects more objectively and about the joy of giving. It is a big responsibility if it is to be conducted with judgment and heart. You can have the former with exposure and experience; you have the latter in abundance now. Thanks, my dear, for sharing my ideals, my goals,and particularly for understanding the basic motivation. Don't ever compromise your high ideals. You need not; you must not. You are, it seems, the one to assume eventual responsibility. Please know how much your letter means to me, as do you.

Devotedly, Gin

During the late afternoon of January 21, 1975, Ken came into the house from working in the garden, a favorite activity, and began to prepare his and Virginia's customary cocktails. Standing at the kitchen sink, with her back turned to him, Virginia listened as her husband related an amusing incident from the day's business luncheon. The phone rang, and Ken answered but then suddenly fell silent. Virginia turned to find him slumped in a chair beside the phone, his face constricted. He was having trouble breathing. Less than two minutes later, Ken Piper, a vibrant man of sixty-four, who had received a clean bill of health from his doctor earlier that day, was dead. The shock to Virginia was devastating.

Months later, in a letter to Sister Carol Frances of Mundelein College dated April 9, 1975, Virginia would try to describe her loss.

Dear Sister Carol Frances:

Please excuse my long-delayed reply to your lovely letter of November 25. As you probably know, I have just lost my husband, Ken, and I move through the days following with the numbness and detachment of a sleepwalker. He died very, very suddenly (in about two minutes), laughing and talking with me one moment,the next slumped in a chair, breathing with great difficulty, and then gone.

Despite every resolve, every effort, I find adjustment and acceptance extremely difficult. Our life came together magically just five years ago (a second marriage for both), and somehow we dared to believe that we were to have quite a few more years of our special happiness,a kind of "reward" for earlier sorrow in each of our lives. Not so. And this is the imponderable. With absolutely everything going for us, this sudden loss is suffocating. I do thank God for the fact that he did not suffer an incapacitating and long-drawn-out illness. He was a vigorous, energetic, courageous, outgoing, warmhearted man who loved life and people and gave generously of his time and talents. Please keep me in your prayers, if that is not too much to ask. I have a l-o-n-g way to go, I fear, before I find inner peace and before I can accept the death, so untimely, of such a wonderful man.

In the hours and days and weeks following Ken's death, friends, family, and clergy surrounded Virginia. A viewing service was held at Messinger Chapel in Scottsdale, followed by a funeral Mass on January 25 at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Church, officiated by Father Michael Weishaar, the same priest and close friend who had married Ken and Virginia. Ken was entombed beside Virginia's parents at Greenwood Memorial Cemetery in Phoenix, and because his presence in Illinois had also been significant, an additional memorial Mass, presided over by Monsignor Fitzgerald, was held at Ken and Virginia's former church, St. Athanasius, in Evanston. A recording of that service was sent to Virginia by the Hubata family. Sister Ann Ida Gannon flew out from Chicago within a few days of Ken's death, staying by Virginia's side for ten days, helping her cope with her devastating grief. Sister Ann Ida recalls Virginia saying, in calmer moments, that she was thankful at least that Ken hadn't suffered. No doubt she was recalling the slow, agonizing death of her first husband, comparing it to the opposite shock of Ken's death without warning in the midst of normal routine. Perhaps she was asking herself why two husbands, marvelous men she had cherished and loved, had both been taken from her.

Kenneth M. Piper Hall, Center for the
Study of Religious Education at Mundelein
College, Chicago, Illinois

Kenneth Piper's elegance, charm, and integrity had matched Virginia's perfectly, and they had enjoyed five years together,five years and twenty-two days, in Virginia's words, "a precious, beautiful, unforgettable CHAPTER" in her life,and once again, Virginia, now sixty-three years old, found herself widowed and alone. Although she would live another twenty-four years, longer than the combined span of both marriages, Virginia would not marry again. "I've had two of the most fabulous husbands," she would often say. "And I know that kind of luck could never happen again." And just as she had stayed on in the house on Normandy Place after Paul died, Virginia remained in the house on North Arroyo Drive, though for years she never entered Ken's office, never touched his things, preferring to leave them just as he had. Another person might have chosen to sell the home, attempt a fresh start in new surroundings free of memories. But Virginia, temperamentally averse to change and perhaps out of tribute to the house she and Ken had helped design and lived in for so brief a time, chose to stay, to carry on in the best way she knew how, surrounded by friends, family, and the challenges and rewards of philanthropic work. The world was always needy, the poor always there. Virginia, with no husband or children of her own, would gradually discover that she had a specific purpose, perhaps even a destiny, to fulfill. Living in service to others, being "unselfed," as her grandmother might have described it, would eventually over a long and uneasy time become her chosen response, her anchoring grace.

Eight months after Ken's death, one of the first public events Virginia managed to participate in was the dedication of the Kenneth M. Piper Hall, Center for the Study of Religious Education, on September 21, 1975, at Mundelein College. The dedication, planned before Ken's death, now held for Virginia an added and anguishing poignancy. After the Mass, celebrated by Monsignor Fitzgerald, a tearful Virginia gave the following remarks at a buffet luncheon:

I am sure you all know that today is a day of mingled emotion for me. It's a day of great pride and gratitude to think that a beautiful building like this could be dedicated to Ken. And it's a day of joy that I can share it with so many of our friends. And it is a day of inevitable recall for the day that Sister mentioned, when Ken was here with us, less than a year ago. I have so much for which to be grateful today, and I think the thing for which I am most grateful, and I am sure you will understand, is that I have found it very difficult to accept and to adjust to losing Ken really so soon after our life had started out so beautifully. But I do know that after today and during today and because of today, thanks to all of you,Father, Sister Ann Ida, and all the Sisters,I give thanks for the very spiritual strength the day has brought to me, and I'm sure to all of you, that I have reached a point now where I can go on.