Virginia Wayne Talbot Harbaugh died Feb. 10, 2016, in Charlottesville, Va., with her daughter Lyn at her side.
Virginia Harbaugh, who died on Feb. 10, grew up in Darien.
Known as Wayne, she was born Dec. 15, 1930 in Savannah, Georgia, the eldest child of Jeannette Butler Strong Talbot of Savannah and Adrian Bancker Talbot of New York City.
She grew up in Darien. After graduating from Smith College in 1952 she moved to Washington, D.C. to work as a research analyst for the National Security Agency.
In Washington she met William Henry Harbaugh, who was doing research in the Library of Congress archives for his history dissertation. They married in 1953 and moved to the University of Connecticut, where he taught history and she worked in the library until the birth of her first child.
An active volunteer, she served as president of the Mansfield chapter of the League of Women Voters, and later of the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania chapter, after her husband took a job at Bucknell University.
When the family moved to Charlottesville in 1966, she served on league committees studying local government and regional planning agencies.
Once her youngest child entered kindergarten, she entered the University of Virginia’s master’s program in planning and urban design. Graduating in 1971, she joined the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission and later became executive director.
She served as president of the Virginia Citizens Planning Association from 1976-78 and helped establish the first Institute for Planning Commissioners. She was the first woman to lead a planning district commission in Virginia, helped establish the first Metropolitan Planning Organization in Charlottesville-Albemarle Urban Area, and was also its first planner.
The Virginia Women’s Forum named her Woman of the Year in 1982. She believed in the power of government to do good, and felt privileged to have known planners, government officials, and citizens who worked together to form regional agencies for housing, libraries, health and mental health, and for the aging.
After retiring in 1986, she taught transportation planning for two years at UVA and VCU.
She and Bill had their first home together in the historic village of Chaplin, Conn., and returned to enjoy summer vacations gardening, swimming in the Natchaug River, and sipping martinis at dusk on the back deck of their little red house.
There she taught her children, and then their children, where to find the best blueberries, how to get the last bit of meat out of a lobster’s claw, and the theory and practice of canoeing and sailing.
She loved telling stories about the freedom that her sister Gay and her younger siblings had growing up — sailing on Long Island Sound, ice skating on local ponds, and bicycling everywhere.
Her remarkable memory and intellectual curiosity were undiminished by age. She always wanted to know what her children and grandchildren were learning, fondly recited the poems she had learned as a child, seemed to know the Latin name for every plant she saw, cheered for the Yankees and the UVA women’s basketball team, and made her grandchildren think carefully about which Democrat to support in the primary.
Family presents were usually books, and she would read them herself first, just to make sure they were interesting.
Wayne was preceded in death by her husband of 52 years; her sisters, Gail Adams Talbot, and Barbara Talbot Rosato; and her granddaughter, Justine Kathryn Brennan.
She is survived by her children, Lyn Harbaugh (formerly Brennan), Bill Harbaugh (Marjorie Taylor), and Rick Harbaugh (Nandini Gupta); her brothers and sisters, Rick Talbot, Deborah Talbot, Bonnie Cuddy and Adrian Bancker Talbot, Jr.; her grandchildren, Amber, Sarah, Anna, Jake, Isha, and Koel; and her nephews and nieces.
She always felt at home among the low wooded hills, clear streams, and rocky shores of southern New England. Her ashes will be interred with those of her husband in Russ Cemetery in Chaplin.
Her family invites friends to join them at an informal open house in her Charlottesville home on Saturday, March 19, 2016, from 2 to 4 p.m. with, as she requested, “a toast or two” starting at 3 p.m. Plans are being made for a gathering in Chaplin later this spring.