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Virginia H. Grattan, known as Ginny, a Southampton resident for more than 70 years, died at Southampton Hospital on December 5, after a stroke suffered a week before. She was 92.
Born in Framingham, Massachusetts, she graduated from Framingham High School and worked as a dental assistant until she moved to Southampton in 1941 after marrying the love of her life, John Grattan.
Ms. Grattan volunteered at Southampton Hospital for many years and, up to the very end, at Sacred Hearts Church, now the Basilica Parish of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.
She is remembered by her many friends and family as a good-spirited, good-humored woman of great strength and energy. She was a lover of animals and her house was filled with stray dogs, cats, birds and sometimes reptiles. Survivors said she had a great capacity for love and devotion, but with a bent toward laughter and lightheartedness. She was a lover of crank calls and elaborate practical jokes, they said.
For many years, along with her late husband, John, she managed much of the business of the Grattans’ Automobile Agency on Hampton Road. She excelled at customer and employee relations.
She raised two sons, John, an attorney in North Carolina, and Jeff, who predeceased her, and a granddaughter, Jennifer, a teacher at Tuckahoe School.
She is survived by John and wife Wende; Jennifer and husband Charles Shearer and their daughter, Piper, and a grandson, Jonathan.
A funeral Mass was said at the Basilica on December 9.
on Dec 9, 2013