Virginia McKim
June 25, 1927-Jan. 26, 2025
Los Altos, California
Except for one year spent in New York and another in Mexico, Virginia Tuggle McKim was a Westerner. She was born in Oakland, California, to Jack and Florence Johnson Tuggle in 1927. She went to kindergarten in Fresno, California, then spent her growing up years in Silverton, Oregon. She attended Oregon State College and in 1950 graduated from University of Washington.
Her degree in advertising and public relations led to jobs as a copywriter in Seattle, San Francisco, and New York City. She worked for The Seattle Times, Wells Fargo Bank and Batten Barton, Durstine and Osborn. For one year she had her own small advertising agency.
In 1955 she married Bob McKim and moved to the San Francisco Peninsula where she lived in Palo Alto, Stanford and Los Altos. She is survived by children Melisa Positeri and Melina Staal-McKim. Her great grandchildren are Jessica Onstott and Ryan Staal. One child, Julie, died in 1969 and her son John McKim died in 2021.
While on her husband’s sabbatical in San Miguel de Allende, she earned a master’s degree in creative writing in 1970. In the 1970s and 1980s, she taught workshops in meditation and journal writing and became a real estate agent.
In the nineties, she started writing a book about her mother called One Woman’s Life. That book was published in 2008. Also in the nineties, she divorced and created her own home in Los Altos.
A book of poetry called I Am That and two books of memoirs, Growing Up In Silverton and Pieces of Time were published in 2009 with the help of her companion, Jim Biggerstaff who pre-deceased Virginia.
She continued writing various aspects of her memoirs, learning how to use her Apple computer and caring for the roses and rhododendrons in her garden. She died peacefully of old age, in her own home. She was surrounded by her loving family, friends and caregivers, gazing out at her sun drenched yard.
Arrangements for a Celebration of Life and interment in her family plot in Silverton, OR are pending.
