Virginia Kinney

Virginia Leonora Hitt Thalman Kinney, passed away peacefully, August 10, 2010 at the age of 95. Ginny, as she was always known by her family and friends, was born in Munising, Michigan on August 10, 1915. She grew up in the Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn, where she was graduated Salutatorian of her Glenbard High School Class. Ginny was the daughter of Herman Holland Hitt, a lumber executive and and later business school founder and Ethel Carr Lowry Hitt, a high school principal and school board member. Mrs. Hitt was a women's tennis pioneer at Vassar College and in Great Britain who hosted tennis events at the family's grass and clay courts in Hyde Park and Glen Ellyn. Ginny was the Chicago Junior Womens' Tennis Champion and winner of the Chicago National Indoor Mixed Doubles Tennis Tournament. She was recruited by Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio to be coached by Mary K. Browne, the womens U. S. National Tennis Singles Champion from 1912-1914. Ginny was the College's tennis champion for four years. She competed annually in Hazel Wightman's collegiate tennis tournaments at the Longwood Cricket Club in Chestnut Hills, Mass., The Armory in New York City and at Merion Cricket Club in Philadelphia, PA where she teamed with her life long friend Jeannette Bricker Entwistle of Cleveland. They frequently practiced together during the winter at the Cleveland Grays Armory and the Hangar and flew together in the College's pioneering women's aviation program. To maintain her amateur standing, Ginny gave exhibitions with Mary K Browne, Alice Marble and Eleanor Tennant. She was featured in photographs on the front pages of both the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Boston Globe. During the summers she taught tennis at the Songadeewin Girls Camp of the Keewaydin Camps in Vermont. Ginny also enjoyed singing soprano for four years with the College's choir directed by Edwin Arthur Kraft with the renowned Morley Music Hall's Skinner pipe organ. She graduated in 1938 with an A.B. in English Literature and an M.A. in Physical Education. Later that year Ginny advanced to the doubles quarter finals of the National Indoor Tennis Tournament and was invited to play the following year in the United States National Tennis championships at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York. After college graduation, she taught tennis at Stephens College in St. Louis, Missouri and both tennis and archery at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. At the University she met her future husband, Alfred J. Thalman, who was completing double degrees in electrical and mechanical engineering. As WWII began, they moved to Massachusetts and New York for his work with General Electric while Ginny worked at one of the first television studios in New York State. He worked at GE headquarters during the war years on engineering that was considered essential to the war effort including the Manhattan Project. His father was an automotive designer from Switzerand who worked in Paris before WW1 and then in the US after the War. His cousin, Martin Mengelt, was founder and Director of the Swiss National Tourist Office. They moved to northeast Ohio where Al became the Corporate Secretary of the Clark Controller Co. They sailed in the Snipe Fleet at the Mentor Harbor Yachting Club and then on their 40 foot 30 Square Metre Boat "Rouge" at the Cleveland Yachting Club up until his death in 1961. In 1973, she married James L. Kinney, a GE Executive, a tennis player and swimmer and longtime Shaker Heights resident, who later died in 1997. In 1973, Ginny joined the Moses Cleaveland Chapter of the DAR, the third generation of her family to belong to the organization. She was descended from Major Moody Dustin as well as his father in law, Colonel Sanford Kingsbury, a cousin of Nathaniel Kingsbury, one of the first settlers of Cleveland, Ohio. She visited the homesteads of several of her female ancestors including John Alden's wife Priscilla Mullins and Hannah Dustin, who with uncommon bravery, after being taken captive by Indians and enduring a month long forced march through the wilderness, lead the escape of her fellow captives back to civilization where she was immortalized in a sermon by Cotton Mather. Dustin has the most statues dedicated to a woman in the United States. Ginny's favorite aphorisms were given to her by Mary K. Browne, her college tennis coach: "Where there is a Will there is a Way" and "You Can if you Care." Her maternal grandmother, Sarah Redfield Perrin Lowry, a concert pianist trained in Paris, was a native of Montpelier, Vt. whose cousins were Admiral George Dewey and Vermont Supreme Court Justice Timothy P. Redfield. Her maternal grandfather George Archibald Carr Lowry, a prominent industrial inventor and winner of a gold medal at the 1900 Paris Exposition, was the grandson of James Carr, President and Director of the Bank of Belfast, brother of William H. K. Lowry, Captain of the Port of Singapore, cousin of Archibald Lowry, a founder of the Royal County Down Golf Club that hosts the British Senior Golf Championships, and a cousin of Sir Gerald Lowry who was a Harley Street physician. Sir Gerald was the first British officer to be wounded during WWI and was blinded but continued to practice medicine, sail at Crewe and ski at St. Moritz, and brought from England Ginny's first phonograph and records which she greatly treasured. Ginny was the Women's Champion in both tennis and curling at The Cleveland Skating Club. She served on the organizing committee of both the Wightman Cup and the Davis Cup events held on alternating years at the Harold T. Clark Courts in Cleveland Heights. She won the Kay Whidden Invitational Women's Doubles Tournament at the Cleveland Racquet Club. She also participated in the Nenner Cup Mixed Doubles Invitational Tennis Tournament at The Country Club. Ginny was a 60 year resident of Shaker Heights, Ohio, a member of the Moses Cleveland Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, where she chaired the Scholarship Committee, the Women's Guild of Fairmount Presbyterian Church, The College Club, The Great Books Club, The Hospital Guild, and The Green Thumb Garden Club. In 2005, she was honored for her life long tennis career by being inducted into the Lake Erie College Athletic Hall of Fame. She is survived by son John R. Thalman of Shaker Heights, son James C. Heather Thalman of Bainbridge, daughter Anne E. Thalman of Shaker Heights, grandson Jamie R. Thalman of Bainbridge, sister Sally R. Fuller of Cutler Bay, Florida and brother Charles M. Hitt of Santurce, Puerto Rico. She was predeceased by her brother Robert L. Hitt, her third son Robert W. Thalman and her nephew Chuck Hitt. She is survived by her nieces and nephew including Marilyn Fred von Hillebrandt, Roger Hitt, Wendy Greg Vezzosi, Christine Robert Buss, Vincent Linda Hitt and Sheri Hitt; as well as four stepchildren. Memorial Services will be held at 11 AM on Saturday, September 11 at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, 2757 Fairmount Blvd, Cleveland Heights, OH. A Reception will be held following the services at 12 PM at The Country Club, 2825 Lander Road, Pepper Pike, OH.


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