VIRGINIA MCNALLY BASCOM

1923 - 2011
Virginia "Ginger" Bascom was an artist, a creative spirit and an adventurous and accomplished cook. She thought it was important to laugh and she laughed a lot. She was born Virginia McNally on March 8, 1923 in Brooklyn, NY. Her mother, Marie, from Bordeaux, France, came to the US as a WWI war bride and worked as a couture seamstress in New York City. Ginger and her older sister, Jeanne, spent many years of their childhoods in Bordeaux with their French grandmother and cousins. Ginger had fond memories of the traveling to Europe and back by steamer in the 1920s. She attended grammar school in Bordeaux and finished high school at Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn, then won a scholarship to study design at the Cooper Union. She worked as a retail display designer for New York department stores. Her paper and wire sculptures were used by Niemann Marcus, Tiffany's, Bergdorf Goodman, and FAO Schwarz. In 1955, she married artist Joe Bascom, and by 1962, they had moved into their Manhattan apartment at 81st and York Avenue. From 1973 to 1991, Ginger worked as recreation director for the social service agency Inwood House, working with pregnant New York City teens. In 1982, Ginger received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cooper Union, when she completed her thesis on the Barcelona architect Gaudi. In the 1980s she returned to France with her sister, traveled to Spain, and visited cousins in Paris and Bordeaux. She traveled in Italy with her son, Mike and daughter-in-law, Nancy in 2001. When her husband, Joe died in 2006, Ginger moved to Portland, OR and lived with her son, Mike. She died January 3, 2011. She leaves son, Robert Winther and his wife, Jacqui Winther, of Williamsburg, VA and son, Michael Bascom and his wife, Nancy Ege, of Portland, OR. She leaves her sister, Jeanne Smith (aka Joan Stanley), and a niece, Pam McGahagin and her family, of Marietta, GA. She leaves a granddaughter, Cristin Winther Westbrook of Marietta, GA. Virginie also leaves many cousins in France.