Virginia K. Shirley

Each blanket was made in favorite colors or team colors. A diehard Baltimore Ravens fan, Ginger made a blanket for one of her doctors in Baltimore, a fellow Ravens fan.

“That kept her occupied. That and the dogs,” said Dave. The couple have two Maltese and one Morkie, a Maltese-Yorkshire Terrier mix.

Ginger’s beloved Ravens won in the last four seconds of the last game she got to see. Her favorite player was quarterback Joe Flacco.

Ginny and Sarah were Pittsburgh Steelers fans and Ginger loved to rub it in when her team won and theirs didn’t. When the Ravens lost, though, Ginger wouldn’t answer their phone calls.

“She made us promise not to burn her Ravens stuff,” Sarah said. 

Ginger and Dave have known each most of their lives.

“We go clean back to second, third, fourth grade. We started dating in ninth or 10th grade and we’ve been together ever since,” Dave said.

Both 1974 Williamsport High School graduates, they got married on July 14, 1974, not long after their high school graduation. Knowing how sick Ginger was, the couple renewed their vows and celebrated with family and friends on their 38th anniversary this summer.

A month later, the family saw a big decline in Ginger’s health.

The couple lived in Hagerstown, Williamsport and Marlowe, W.Va., moving into their Big Pool home in March 2011.

Growing up in Williamsport and Halfway, Ginger, who didn’t like the name Virginia, was the fifth of six sisters. Their father was a tree trimmer.

Edie, a year older, said Ginger loved to climb trees. The older sisters would make Ginger sneak out with them on Friday nights, climbing down the TV antenna. One night, Ginger stepped on a board that alerted their father to their departure.

“She was daring. If she couldn’t do it, she’d at least try,” Edie said.

As a kid, Ginger loved fishing and gardening and looked forward to the summer program in a Williamsport park, where she enjoyed making baskets. She was crowned FFA queen in 1974.

Her talents included floral design and she arranged the flowers “for every wedding she know about,” Edie said.

“She had a knack for it. She was talented,” Sarah said.

Childhood favorites included Shirley Temple and Elvis Presley movies and Felix the Cat cartoons, Edie said. Sonya remembers her mother’s love for the music of Patsy Cline and Elvis Presley and said Ginger was known for singing “Walking After Midnight” and “Crazy.”

“She was a person you couldn’t stay mad at and she couldn’t stay made at you. She made you laugh,” Edie said.

“If somebody was picking on you at school, she’d take up for you.”

Growing up, Edie said when the family took car trips to Tennessee and Ohio, their mother would take crackers along, because Ginger always got car sick, which continued throughout her life. Dave said she took Dramamine for the trip to Baltimore.