Virginia in Her World Sphere

An envelope sent to Virginia from her Turkish friend attempting to apply for a green card.

A birth announcement sent to Virginia from her Brazilian friends. 

The last and largest sphere of Virginia's influence was the world-wide sphere. Not only did she send and receive letters to well-known figures in the United States, such as Margaret Sanger and Eleanor Roosevelt, she also maintained close friendships with many people who were not US citizens at all. One man wrote to her multiple times with requests for help obtaining a visa, which she petitioned her government representatives for on his behalf. Another group of friends, according to her, spoke only Portuguese, because they were from Brazil. Her diary is full of exotic-sounding names and places, and during the last few years of her life she traveled extensively, writing letters from New Zealand, Canada, and Spain along with many other foreign places.

This global interest may seem abnormal for a woman from Virginia's time and circumstances, but perhaps it is the path that many would have taken had they not gotten married and settled down. Virginia was just old enough to have remembered "adulthood" before the war, when the US had been culturally engaged with many foreign nations. She had been raised in a time (if not place) wherein it was acceptable but not encouraged for women to be single and choose their own paths. She carried these ideas of independence and cultural acceptance forward into a generation whose ideals included American isolationism and domesticity. Her "different" ideas may not have been very different from those she heard as a young woman, but they were definitely different from the post-war era that she lived through. The story of her life, then, may not be as different from others who had grown up at the same time. Perhaps the perceived focus of isolationism was not as common in people’s lives as it was in political rhetoric.