After I'd gotten to know Virginia well, I asked if I could call her Gin, like her sister did. "Yes," she said. "I have no problem with that,as long as I can call you Tom." But she never did. She called me Bishop Tom.

-Bishop Thomas O'Brien, former Bishop of the Diocese of Phoenix

After I became bishop in 1982, Virginia and I grew to be good friends. We spoke a couple of times about her becoming Catholic, how she took instructions secretly, then surprised Paul. She took a great thrill in how she had pulled this off, taking instruction quietly, confidentially.

Virginia was very interested in young people, children, especially poor children. She was very interested in the elderly and in healthcare. I would make an annual visit to let her know how the money she had given to the diocese was being spent. I remember her saying many, many times, "I want to be a part of the team."

In the last years, she had a bit of a hearing problem and asked that you sit next to her good ear, so I'd always sit in the same spot, the same chair in her living room. She came to my home for dinner several times, and afterward we'd always sing old songs that she liked. She loved music and had a gorgeous white grand piano in her home, with some sort of box in it that would play the keys.

She also liked cats and even had stray ones around. They'd skip about the house, and a couple of times she fell over the cats. When I said, "Virginia, don't stumble and fall over those cats," she looked at me as though I should mind my own business.

When Pope John Paul II came to Phoenix on September 14, 1987, I invited Virginia to meet His Holiness. Faith was important to Virginia; it wasn't something that she took casually. She lived it, and with the resources that she had, she made her mark in the Valley.

She sent me a birthday gift every year, and if I sent her flowers for her birthday, I'd get a note back immediately. The last time I saw her, probably a month or so before she died, I had realized her death was imminent. She'd been ill for at least a year and couldn't leave her home. She didn't want people to know she couldn't do for herself, so she would hide her walker when people came to visit. She didn't want to be treated as though she were ill or aged.

Virginia Piper was just a class act.