Virginia E. Torre

Virginia E Torre short life history

Virginia Ellen Torre (mom)was born in Barton, Ohio, in Belmont county on November 06, 1925 to Elzy & Susie Worrell. Barton is a few miles west of the Ohio river near Wheeling, West Virginia. There were 8 children in the family, 5 girls and 3 boys, and Virginia was the oldest girl. Her brothers and 1 sister have all passed on. Her family heritage is from Germany, Austria and Wales, and her ancestors immigrated from Europe before the American Revolution. She was a member of the DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution.

Elzy was a soldier in the US Army during WWI, and fought in some of the important battles in France. He and Susie got married after he returned from the war. Elzy’s brother, Garnet, married Susie’s sister, and they were a close-knit family. Her dad raised hunting dogs, coon hounds, but they didn’t have any dogs as pets. He worked in the coal mines, as a miner, and also cut the timbers that were used to brace up the tunnels. Later they moved to a place close to Cadiz, Ohio, where she went to Freeport High school. She was always proud that Clark Gable was also from the Cadiz area.

Her family lived on a small farm, where they grew a lot of their own food and raised some cows and pigs. They also had wild turkeys around, and om used to tell about trying to stalk the turkeys through the woods, or when an old gobbler jumped up on her. She would sometimes complain about carrying buckets of water from the spring up to the kitchen, and say it contributed to her arthritis(along with working on manual typewriters at the base). And her mother made her iron the family bedsheets before she was allowed to fold them and put them away. When they wanted to listen to the radio, her dad would take the battery out of the truck and bring it to the house and hook it up to the radio for power.

After she graduated from high school in 1943, she got on a bus to Dayton and began working at Wright Patterson AFB. She got an apartment in downtown Dayton, at the southwest corner of Main and Monument, with her friend Penny. Penny is still living in New Carlisle, and mom and Penny stayed friends their whole lives. The building is still there, and as an apartment building. Wright Patterson is where she met dad. She married Vito Franco Torre in August of 1950 at Westminster Presbyterian Church here in Dayton. Dad’s parents were both from Sicily and came to this country on boats in the great wave of immigrants in the early 20th century. They lived in Martins Ferry, Ohio, about 10 miles from Barton.

Soon after they were married, they bought the house at 3724 West Hillcrest, between Salem and Gettysburg, and that is where they lived when we three boys were born.

That is where mom met Elsie Cruset, and they became best friends. Elsie passed away in 1989, and this was a huge loss for mom. She has always missed Elsie.

Mom worked at the base for about two years, and then worked at the Key-Rec company off Salem Ave. After she had Dan, she stayed home to raise us. We lived there until 1963, when we moved to 3206 Forest Grove Ave, a couple miles away, near Philadelphia and Salem. That is when mom started selling Avon, which is something she continued for decades, and she won a number of sales awards from Avon.

We never went on extravagant vacations, as pretty much every year we went back to see their parents in Cadiz and Martins Ferry. We boys didn’t mind though, as they were great places to visit, and we loved our grandparents. There was always something to do at either place. We did like to go fishing, and once went on a long fishing trip to Canada, up above the Great Lakes. We rented a cabin and had fishing guides. Mom was not as enthusiastic as we were, as she did the cooking in the cabin. When dad and us boys wanted to buy a tow behind camper and do more of this, she squelched the idea.

In 1973 we moved to 6444 Oakhurst in Butler Twp. Dad retired in 1975 after 33 years at Wright Patterson, but he passed away too soon, in 1983, from pancreatic cancer. Mom had bout with breast cancer a year after dad died but has been cancer free since. Even at her death, she was not on any medications, except for a thyroid pill that she very rarely took.

Mom remained single for the rest of her life. She did travel some with friends in the intervening years, going to Italy, Egypt and the Mediterranean. She has also been to Alaska numerous times. First on a cruise, then to visit Steve and his family, who lived there for about 14 years. Mom even became a mortgage loan officer at 75, working for a time for Dan and David when they had their mortgage business. David, her youngest son, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2005, when mom was 80. When he got very ill, she helped take care of him for the last couple years until he passed away in 2011, when she was almost 86. Mom still lived by her self up until a year and a half ago, aided by regular visits from Dan, Steve and Debbie. In September 2017 she was hospitalized for a problem with her esophagus that was preventing her from eating properly. She had corrective surgery, and in late October 2017 we moved her into Steve and Debbies home as she was unable to care for herself anymore, and that is where she stayed until now.