Isabel Anderson Fitzgerald

1932 - 2024

Isabel Anderson Fitzgerald

September 27, 1932 - September 6, 2024

Isabel Anderson Fitzgerald of Richmond, mother of four, volunteer, nursery school teacher and prize-winning amateur golfer, died of an aggressive cancer on September 6 with her children and beloved Samoyed, Bear, at her side. She was three weeks shy of 92. "I am sad (and indignant) to hear of Isabel's death," a friend wrote. "The very idea! It's just not her style to die."

Indeed, cancer had tried and failed to get her at least five times before (breast, lung twice, melanoma, squamous cell). When she broke her leg and had to get a fourth hip replacement in 2022, the orthopedist predicted she'd never walk again. More than two years later, the week before she died, after surviving another broken femur, two pelvis fractures, and multiple hospital stays, she was out doing laps around her assisted living facility's parking lot in the hot sun with her bright blue walker. She'd had a heart attack in 2013 but no need for a stent; her body had created its own bypass.

"Ibel," as her friends called her, was raised to be a socialite and was often featured in the Richmond society pages as a teen. As an adult, she would have none of it. An athlete by nature, she professed an allergy to lunching with the ladies, disliked parties, and was happiest in jeans, shorts, or a bathing suit, playing golf, taking her children water skiing or fishing, raking up gum balls, walking her dogs, or rooting for her grandchildren at their lacrosse or soccer games. After having classical and opera music forced on her growing up, she couldn't stand it -- "Can you turn that off?"-- preferring Scott Joplin and Billy Joel.

Isabel loved to dance and could play anything on the piano by ear. She said she was one of only two women she knew who would listen to a football game on the radio. She knew how to use a chainsaw and had a sharp sarcastic wit. A day and a half before she died, she was hopped up on morphine and mostly unable to speak, but when an aide asked her, "How are you doing today, Isabel?" she summoned up a bright fake smile and said, with gusto, "Great!" ("Ask a stupid question.").

The youngest child of Edward Clifford Anderson and Isabel Scott Anderson, she attended St. Catherine's School in Richmond and graduated from St. Timothy's School in Maryland where, faced with rules like "no smiling in the hallways," she and a classmate vied weekly for who could get the most "tidy crosses" or demerits. She then attended Sweet Briar College, later dropping out to care for an ill family member.

Before having children of her own, Isabel taught nursery school. Over the years she volunteered for the Junior League of Richmond and assisted with speech therapy at Sheltering Arms Hospital. She was on the Sheltering Arms Junior Board at the time it launched the Bal du Bois, still the rehabilitation hospital's biggest fundraiser. During the 1980s, she managed her father's working dairy farm. A lifelong Republican, she was a staunch environmentalist and pro-choice. She went to bat for people she cared about. In the 1980s, she repeatedly lobbied Virginia's Episcopal bishop in support of gay marriage, after her beloved hairdresser was banned from his life partner's deathbed. Decades before "Me Too" she spoke out strongly against a powerful man at a beach club who was sexually harassing a young female employee.

In 1962, Isabel married James Turner Sloan, Jr., who died in 1965. She was later married to and divorced from Harvie Wilkinson Fitzgerald, who died in 2014. She was also preceded in death by sister Elise Anderson "Leasie" Bryan, brother George Wayne Anderson, Hylah Gardner Wright, who was like a mother to her; stepson James Turner Sloan III; sister-in-law Virginia Lee Anderson; son-in-law Brian Dumas; and longtime friend Leoria Ingram Johnson.

She is survived by her children, Louise Sloan, Edward Sloan, Isabel Dumas, and Caroline Fitzgerald; grandchildren Tyler Dumas, Leah Dumas, Sydney Dumas, Scott Sloan, and Finley Fitzgerald; nieces Isabel Bryan and Randy Anderson Trainor (Tom), nephews Robert Bryan, John Bryan (Carter), and Edward Anderson (Mary Hoge), stepchildren Jane Sloan Casini, Claude Coleman "C.C" Sloan (Cathy), and John Sloan, and many cousins, especially second cousin and lifelong friend Mary "Polly" Scott Cardozo.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. on Saturday, September 21 at St. Mary's Episcopal Church,12291 River Rd. in Richmond, with a reception to follow.