Virginia Richardson Goulding

Virginia Daniel Richardson was born on Easter Sunday, March 27, 1921, in the home of her parents, Emma Poe Richardson and George Daniel Richardson, at 9 North Blount Street, Raleigh. On January 30, 1943, she married William Muirhead Goulding of Boston, Massachusetts, at Hayes Barton Methodist Church in Raleigh, where she was a charter member.

A 1937 graduate of Needham Broughton High School, she completed a Bachelor of Literary Interpretation degree at Emerson College, Boston, in 1941 and received the AB degree from UNC Chapel Hill in 1942. She later completed her Master of Education degree at the University of Pittsburgh. During her 30-year career as a speech pathologist and educator, she devoted herself to the needs of her students and to furthering her profession and advocating for legislation in reaction to those needs. A favorite quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson was, "Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." In 2006 W. David Mills, of the North Carolina Dept. of Public Instruction, recognized Virginia as the first certified speech-language pathologist providing service to public school children in North Carolina. She set up a speech correction program at Chapel Hill Elementary School in 1946 and continued working as a speech clinician in the Raleigh schools and at the Wake County Cerebral Palsy Center. In the Pittsburgh, PA, area after initially teaching kindergarten at The Western Pennsylvania School for the Blind, Virginia served for many years as a resource teacher for hearing impaired public school elementary children before returning to Wake County in 1973 where she introduced mainstreaming of hearing impaired children into regular public school classrooms. In 1986, the year of her retirement, she was awarded "Honors of the Association" by the North Carolina Speech, Hearing & Language Association. In 2004 at the 50th Annual Convention of that organization, she and her good friend and colleague Helen Gay Stephenson were recognized as two of the three original members of that Association. Until her death she remained active in the Alpha Omicron Chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma, an international professional honorary society of women educators.

Virginia had many passions, her family, friends and career being primary. Whatever interest she pursued, she did it with lots of research: reading, consultation with experts and discussion with fellow enthusiasts. She loved to gather information, particularly newspaper articles, about everything she was interested in or thought others would be, and to share what she learned. Family members and friends remember receiving packets of material upon every visit and sometimes by mail in fat manila envelopes. Papers and articles included Virginia's personal comments and highlighting, notes in the margin and on sticky notes. She said that this was her way of communicating with people she cared about when time or distance did not permit frequent contact. She loved photographs, her cats Zoey and Whiskers, music, particularly opera and symphony, gardening, coffee, chocolate ice cream, UNC TV, jigsaw puzzles, Shakespeare, history, college basketball, politics and her home state of North Carolina.

She was preceded in death by her parents, her husband, and her two sisters, Carol Richardson Upham Hayes and Emily Richardson Kellam Babcock, both of Raleigh.

She is survived by her three children, Anne Poe Goulding Foster and husband, Ted of Annapolis, Maryland; Timothy Richardson Goulding and wife, Gina of Cary; and Margaret Goulding Ellis of Raleigh. She delighted in her grandchildren, Daniel Morgan Foster and wife Jean; Elizabeth Poe Foster; Mark Emerson Foster; David Richardson Goulding; and Christopher Conley Ellis; and in her great-grandchildren, Charlotte Elizabeth, Leah Anne, and Rae Claire Foster. Two nephews, Robert George Kellam and The Rev. John Exley Upham, Jr., both of Raleigh, also survive.

A funeral service will be held at 2 p.m. Sunday, January 6, 2013, at Hayes Barton United Methodist Church. Burial will follow at Montlawn Memorial Park. The family will receive friends on Saturday, January 5, from 4 to 6 pm at Brown-Wynne Funeral Home, 300 St. Mary's Street, Raleigh.

If so desired, donations in memory of Virginia may be made to Hayes-Barton Methodist Church, 2209 Fairview Road, Raleigh, NC 27608 or to the North Carolina Speech, Hearing & Language Association, Inc., PO Box 28359, Raleigh, NC 27611.