Virginia M. Mullins

Born Virginia Hill Mountjoy in Goshen, Indiana on October 4, 1927 to Harold and Gertrude Mountjoy, she graduated in 1945 from Oak Park High School in Illinois. In 1949 she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Business from Indiana University, where she was a member of Alpha Delta Pi sorority.

Among Ginny’s favorite childhood memories were attending baseball games on Friday afternoons with her mother at Chicago’s Wrigley Field, where she collected autographs of her favorite players. She maintained her love of sports, with a special fondness for the Houston Astros and (during the Landry years) for the Dallas Cowboys.

Ginny was a born adventurer. Shortly after college graduation, she and a friend with a convertible set off on a cross-country trek – the young women traveled Route 66 from Indianapolis to Los Angeles. Ginny maintained her love of travel and new experiences all her life. She was an Anglophile, so naturally London was to become a favorite destination.

On February 4, 1956 in Indianapolis, Ginny married Robert Mullins, the “boy across the street”. It was cold; so cold in fact, that not long afterwards, Ginny and Bob looked at each other and decided to drive South as soon as they finished shoveling their red and white Nash Metropolitan out of the snow. They settled in Houston, where they started a family and enjoyed not shoveling snow. In addition to being a devoted and loving wife and mother, Ginny relished her career as corporate Graphics Coordinator at the architectural and design firm 3D/International from which she retired in 2002.

All her life Ginny loved craft, working with her hands and sharing both the results and process with others. She poured her creativity, talent and keen attention to detail into knitting, embroidery, needlepoint, bookbinding and especially ceramics. Friends were always delighted to receive beautiful gifts of ceramic angels, bells, and other creations, exquisitely detailed (wispy individual eyelashes on the angels!) and imbued with Ginny’s cheerful kindness.

Ginny enjoyed many years with the Handcrafts group at St. Thomas Episcopal Church and School in Houston. More recently, Ginny and her Natty Knitters friends knitted tens of thousands of caps for cancer patients, many of them children, at MD Anderson, Texas Children’s and Ben Taub hospitals.

Ginny considered herself blessed with an abundance of riches: devoted family and friends, enough safety and security, generally good health, caring doctors, a fair lifetime of experience and opportunity and a store of great memories. She loved celebrating the holidays and her annual Christmas tree trimming party became legendary. Everyone whose life Ginny touched was also richly blessed. Just seeing her smiling face and hearing her cheerful voice made it a better day. For decades Ginny was a neighborhood fixture, walking a succession of dogs daily and always wearing her silver crown pendant. Children used to wait for her to arrive on their street; in fact, during the Irish Setter “Murphy” years, the children called her “Mrs. Murphy.”

Ginny’s immense kindness, good humor, inherent generosity, intrepid honesty, bright eyes, beaming smile and ever-so-sweet nature will be greatly missed.

She is survived in Texas by her son Steve Mullins and his partner, Kemberly Warren, and by her nieces Carolyn Harrison, Jeri Briceno and Mary Beth Skarke and their families.

Ginny had the great joy of re-connecting late in life with her half-sister Peg Hoffer of Indiana, leading to a relationship that each treasured. She is survived in Indiana by her nephew Brian Hoffer and his family.

A visitation will be held at Earthman Bellaire Funeral Home:

Wednesday July 27, 2022, 6:00-9:00 PM

4525 Bissonnet Street, Bellaire, TX 77401

713 667-6505

Funeral service will be held at Saint Thomas Episcopal Church:

Thursday July 28, 2022, 3:00 PM

4900 Jackwood, Houston, TX 77096

713 666-3111