Virginia Galvin Piper

Memories

Laura Grafman and Virginia Piper

Virginia' s great dream for herself was to have been an author of note, a romantic novelist. With her passion for the written word, she always wanted to write the world's greatest love story. One day she said to me, "I have an idea. We can just pretend we are authors. I'll choose the pen name Esmerelda E. Englehardt and your pen name can be Francesca Farrington." A perfect combination and we were off and running, and for years, we fantasized that we had become two best-selling authors, and it was always a great game between us. I'd call her and say, "I hear you're autographing your latest book over at Barnes and Noble today," and she'd say, "Well, I am but I just don't know if I should have written about that very steamy romantic affair in this book, but I just had to." It was Virginia's way of having fun and maybe relieving some of the stress of all her work.

Other times, we'd have "Movie Day." Virginia just loved movies, especially grand, romantic stories. Sometimes we would take off for a day and go to the Cineplex and just see one movie after another. We would spend the whole day that way, seeing up to four movies in a row. Again, I think it was an escape, temporarily, from the demanding role of being Virginia Piper. She could, for a day, escape into a dark theater and watch movies, travel outside herself into the stories of other people. She just loved that.

-Laura Grafman