As a small town girl, progressive young woman, health care professional, wonderful wife and
supportive mother, outdoor adventurer and devoted spouse, Helen Virginia (Weinheimer)
Wicheta lived life to the fullest. She passed away on July 5, 2022 at the age of 94.
Virginia was born at the family home in Stonewall, Texas. Her father was Alvin H. Weinheimer, a
great grandson of one of the original German immigrant founders of Fredericksburg, Texas in
1847. Her mother was Rose Theresa (Fritz) Weinheimer, a nurse born to German immigrants
homesteading in the territory of Arizona. Our mother had disliked her first name since
childhood and became known to all by her middle name, Virginia.
Her early childhood occurred in the midst of the depression, re-enforcing the German values of
frugality and work. She was given the responsibilities of being the oldest child. Traits she would
maintain all her life were apparent early on: being diligent, organized and tidy. One humorous
story involved how she dealt with having to share a room with her less orderly little sister- she
drew a chalk line down the middle to separate the halves! Another lifelong characteristic
already visible in her youth was her impeccable penmanship which so many would notice even
when she was into her 90s. She was a lifelong avid reader.
In small town Stonewall, her chores involved the usual farm duties such as milking the cow and
feeding livestock, with feeding the pigs being her least desired chore. She also worked in the
family’s peach orchard and garden. Her parents owned the Stonewall general store,
Weinheimer and Son, still present and still in the family for over 100 years. She was expected
to help there as well. The early store had a saloon and one of her jobs was serving beer to the
patrons.
One of the regular store patrons she waited on was the Johnson family. Her parents knew
them both from the store and from having adjoining ranch land. Years later, the young man
mother had known as a child became President Lyndon Johnson, and as an adult she would
often accompany her mother to the “Texas White House” in Stonewall to visit with her friend
Lady Bird.
And as hard working folk, her parents also built and ran the Stonewall Dance Hall, a lively place
for many years. It was a sister venue to the later better known Luchenbach Dance Hall a few
miles to the west. Mom and her mother made the sandwiches and served the drinks at the
Saturday night dances.
When WW II broke out, my mother recalled sitting on the front yard fence watching mile after
mile of army convoys passing, waving to the soldiers. She remembers a radio station in Austin
referring suspiciously to “that nest of Germans” in the Hill Country, which they found most
disturbing as many local families they knew lost boys in the war, including a close neighbor boy
who was killed at Pearl Harbor.
Because Stonewall lacked a high school, Virginia moved in with her paternal grandparents 15
miles away to attend high school in Fredericksburg. In later years she discussed how she
cherished that opportunity to get to know her grandparents. During these years, she worked as
a reporter for the Fredericksburg newspaper.
Virginia graduated as Salutatorian in 1942. In those days few women went to college, and she
became the first woman from Stonewall to go to college, entering the University of Texas at
age 16. She recalled that some locals criticized this decision, bluntly telling her parents they
saw no reason for a girl to go to college! Fortunately, both of her parents, as well as a
mentoring progressively independent aunt, were very pro-education for women and
encouraged our mother’s ambitions.
At the University, she majored in bacteriology with a minor in English, and was a “Bluebonnet
Belle.” Alphabetical seating in a chemistry classes located her next to a boy named William E.
Wicheta who astutely observed “she took better notes than me”. She wrote to him when he
went off to war. In fact, she told us in later years, with a sly smile at her bold concept of
wildness, “He wasn’t the only boy I wrote to!”
After graduation, she went to work for the Texas State Health Department. When she and her
fellow women bacteriologists noticed a male bacteriologist with less experience was being
paid more for the same work, our mother was elected as the group spokesperson to confront
the director - who, by the way, just retorted unapologetically “Of course he is paid more, he has
a family to support.” Aside from her work in Austin, she also worked in Tyler Texas for the
Health Department during a diphtheria epidemic.
William Wicheta survived the war and dating resumed. On August 2, 1948, our parents married.
Her father, being the practical German, noticing the poverty of my father and that his plans to
first finish college and then go to dental school would take many years of schooling, tried once
more to dissuade her on the drive to the church! But proceed she did and the marriage lasted
until her spouse died after nearly 71 years of marriage.
For their honeymoon, after a week in New Orleans, they spent a spartan week tenting well off
the beaten track in the mountains of Colorado, setting the pattern for the type of vacations
they would take before and after having children.
The early years were lean times for the young couple, our mother working full time and our
father working multiple odd jobs while at UT. After graduation they moved to Dallas for
William’s dental school and our mother worked at the Wadley Blood Center and was involved
with the research being done on the Rh blood factor with Dr. Hill and Sol Haberman.
After her husband graduated, the young pair settled in Austin, Texas where they would remain
all their lives. As we children came along, she discontinued her formal work to concentrate on
the family. She was highly involved with us, including volunteering as a school room mother, a
girl scout leader and a cub scout den mother. She loved celebrating the holidays with creative
house decorations and baking special treats. In fact, cooking was one of her beloved passions.
She truly loved it and not only put delicious home cooked meals on the table, but also created
wonderful homemade desserts and other treats from scratch. Dad often said “why go out to a
restaurant and pay money for food that’s not nearly as good?!”
Her extended family was always close and dear to us all, and many were our trips “to the
country”, ie back to her home town of Stonewall. We children had an idyllic childhood being
around grandparents, aunts, uncles, great aunts and uncles and cousins. The adults
occasionally would speak German. With a sense of humor, mother sometimes would tease us
children to exasperation when we were little by speaking to us only in German for what seemed
like hours!
Mother was also an enthusiastic participant in our rustic family outdoor trips and adventures,
and was the type to never complain about the inconveniences of the outdoors such as
weather, sleeping in a tent, cooking over campfires or on a camp stove for a couple of weeks
with no running water, no showers or other facilities around. In the early 1970s we began
venturing further afield up to the Pacific Northwest. Aside from falling in love with a new part of
the country, many dear and long lasting friendships were formed. Despite zero prior experience
on snow and ice, she joyously embraced our new family love of climbing. A true life high point
for her was successfully summiting Mt. Rainier in her 40s, a memory she treasured all her life.
Mom was a member of various organizations. She had long been involved with the Dental
Wives Auxiliary. She was a lifelong devout Catholic and the church was a key part of her life,
and in later years as we children moved off to college she increased her involvement in St
Theresa’s Catholic Church Ladies Club. She returned to the workforce with a new career as a
real estate agent which she very much enjoyed, working at the prestigious Amanda Bullock
Real Estate Agency. As Amanda was married to politician Bob Bullock, later the namesake for
the Texas State History Museum, she was invited to many high level social events. After that,
mother worked many years as a receptionist in our father’s dental office. With her cheerful
social demeanor, the joke was that patients returned to the office to be able to visit with her as
much as see our father!
In her 60s she was diagnosed with a small malignant breast cancer, a frightening diagnosis at
the time. Discovered early, this was successfully treated. She felt blessed to be a cancer
survivor and gave back by being a regular attendee at a Woman’s Breast Cancer support group
until age forced her to quit.
Always family oriented, she adored each arriving grandchild and in later years few things would
make her light up as much as holding a new great-grandchild. She remained a devoted spouse
to the end, and it was with extreme reluctance that she was forced to admit that her beloved
life partner and husband had to be moved to a hospice facility for the last couple of years of his
life. He preceded her in death. Fortunately, with support of family and wonderful caregivers,
our mother was able to live in her own home until the end, although she never full adjusted to
our dad’s absence. We wish to thank Amy and Anna for helping so much, and especially give
our thanks and love to Lorie who became a true friend and companion as well as caregiver to
mom.
All of us feel so fortunate to have had such a wonderful mother.
She was preceded in death by her husband, her brother Alvin F. Weinheimer and her sister
Bernice Walsh. She is survived by children Susan (John) Fuchs, William (Lesley) Wicheta and
Tom (Kim) Wicheta, grandchildren Virginia (Fuchs) and Moritz Brandt, Lauren (Fuchs) and Kyle
Discher, Janet (Fuchs) and Jared Bruns, Kelley (Wicheta) and Tim Zinka, Kathryn Wicheta,
William (Caresse) Wicheta, and Sarah Wicheta, and great grandchildren Westley and Amy
Brandt, Sarah Kathryn and Scarlett Zinka, and Claire Discher.
In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the American Cancer Society, the American Heart
Association, St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Fredericksburg or St Theresa’s Catholic Church in
Austin.
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