Rash's Surname Index
Notes for Virginia WELLS
Virginia Wells Maloney, 98, a sculptor and volunteer who was active on the local social scene for 60 years, died of pneumonia Tuesday, July 5, at Beaumont, a retirement community in Bryn Mawr.
Mrs. Maloney was a member of the Women's Committee of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for more than 50 years and served more than 45 years on the board of the Charlotte Cushman Club, a residence in Philadelphia for actresses on tour. She remained involved after the club became the Charlotte Cushman Foundation in 1999.
For 30 years, she served on the board of Appleford, a historic mansion, arboretum, and bird sanctuary in Lower Merion. She helped organize Appleford garden parties featuring displays of vintage cars, including the 1964 Lincoln convertible that she and her husband, Paul, had purchased when it was introduced. She told The Inquirer in 1996 that the Lincoln was the same model in which President John F. Kennedy was riding when he was shot in Dallas.
Mrs. Maloney was also a patron of the Alice Paul Institute in Mount Laurel, N.J. Her husband was a cousin of the feminist and suffragist who led the effort to pass the 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, and later authored the proposed Equal Rights Amendment.
Among her many endeavors, Mrs. Maloney took special pride in her involvement in the campaign to preserve the Philadelphia Waterworks, according to her daughter, Virginia Lawrence.
Beginning in the early 1970s and continuing for 30 years, she and other members of the Fairmount Waterworks Restoration Project Committee of the Junior League of Philadelphia raised millions of dollars for their cause. She believed the project was a legacy to the city and was always showing off the 19th-century Waterworks to out-of-town visitors, her daughter said. The restored structures include an interpretive museum and a restaurant.
Mrs. Maloney was brought up to believe in contributing to the betterment of society, her daughter said. She was energetic and curious and loved being involved with people and projects, Lawrence said.
Mrs. Maloney graduated from the Agnes Irwin School, which was then in Center City. After graduating from the Philadelphia College of Art, now the University of the Arts, she worked for an interior designer until her marriage in 1936. She and her husband moved in 1947 to Bryn Mawr, where they raised two children.
In her 50s, Mrs. Maloney took up sculpting and studied with the artist Leon Sitarchuk. Over the next two decades, she created an impressive number of works in bronze, steel, and found objects, her daughter said. On Friday afternoons, wearing her mink coat, she would stop by the welding-supplies store en route to a Philadelphia Orchestra concert, Lawrence said.
Since she was a young woman, Mrs. Maloney had spent summer vacations at her family's camp in the Adirondacks.
Besides her daughter, she is survived by four grandchildren; four great-grandchildren; and a daughter-in-law, U.S. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D., N.Y.). Her husband died in 2001, and a son, Clifton, died in 2009.
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