Virginia Aileen Hobbs, known and loved as “Ginger,” died on August 25, 2025, at the Vermont Respite House.
She was born on February 24, 1939, in Santa Monica, Calif., where she began her life under the shadow of World War II air raids, raised by Charles and Daisy Hobbs, who adopted and loved her.
When the threat of war became too much for the family, they moved back east toward the family home of Chaffee, Mo. An eventual series of family losses, transitions and remarriages had her moving from Missouri to Indiana, where as a teenager she met and married Doug Schuessler.
Their young marriage didn’t last but did serve as a springboard that brought her and a friend to Manhattan. It was there, while registering for classes at City College, that she met handsome young Jerry Weinberg. The two married in 1963 and became politically active fighting the Vietnam War, challenging racism and fighting for workers’ rights. Daughter Cheryl was born in Hackensack, N.J., in 1969, where the family lived until moving to nearby Passaic, a city Ginger and Jerry chose for its cultural and racial diversity, as well as connection to the labor movement.
Ginger received a BA in history from Montclair State University in 1974 and taught school and had a variety of jobs until finding her way to Time-Life, where she worked as a proofreader, editor and typesetter for many of the publications that were housed in the Time-Life building across from Radio City Music Hall in midtown Manhattan. One of her favorite Time-Life stories was about the idiot boss who once boasted that he had outwitted his high-calorie condensed soup by adding only half of the recommended amount of water — in a small, funny way underscoring her confidence that workers were generally at least as smart as the people supervising them. An eventual buyout provided the incentive and the ability to leave the tri-state area and move to Vermont, where she and Jerry launched Five Spice Cafe on lower Church Street in Burlington. He moved to Burlington in 1985, and Ginger and Cheryl followed in 1986.
One day in 1999, she announced that she had received a voicemail from someone doing genealogical research and that new cousins might soon become part of the family. But that message was from a nephew who had been trying to find Ginger herself — the lost sibling they had learned about many years before and (pre-internet) had been patiently trying to find. This began a series of reunions, visits, phone calls, letters and connections that were a source of joy and pride.
Though they separated and then divorced, she and Jerry co-owned and operated Five Spice until selling the restaurant and retiring in 2006. Along the way, she made many friends inside and outside of work and enriched her life with participation in spiritual life at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington; devoted practice of the Korean healing art Kouk Sun Do (for which she traveled to Korea to test for her black belt); and volunteer leadership with JUMP (Joint Urban Ministry Project), which advocated for and served neighbors experiencing financial hardship. Having experienced extreme poverty as a child, she was always seeking compassionate, practical, structural approaches to help others left at society’s margins. Until her final weeks, she was an active participant in the weekly Black Lives Matter vigil held at the Episcopal cathedral next door to where she lived.
In 2002, she became a grandmother when Ethan Charles Herrick was born, to be followed in 2005 by his beloved younger brother, Zander Reed Herrick. She was an absolutely devoted GG, who provided childcare and was a frequent co-traveler on family trips and expert host of overnight visits.
In 2014, after a series of strange symptoms, she was diagnosed with Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia, an exceedingly rare non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Through curiosity and research, the support of the community of fellow “Wallies,” and constant care through the Vermont Cancer Center/Hematology Oncology, she was able to live a good, vibrant, joyful (if immunocompromised) life.
About cancer, she said, “I don’t ever ask ‘Why me?’ I think about how amazing it is that most of the cells in the body do what they’re supposed to, most of the time.”
Care, gratitude and wonder are what carried her to her final days. Even when those last ones were hard, in conversations she still asked visitors and callers, “But how are you?,” still cherished the incredible view of Lake Champlain that faced her window, and thought creatively and lovingly about the world of which she was a part. She became the center of a circle of love built by dear friends and neighbors, family near and far, and the guidance of Dr. Karen Sokol and the UVM Home Health & Hospice team.
We did not want to say goodbye but could not have imagined a more beautiful passage.
Ginger lives on in the many, many good works she devoted herself to and is survived by her daughter, Cheryl Lynn Carmi, and son-in-law, Dov Michael Schiller, of Burlington (and Elmore); grandsons, Ethan Charles Herrick of Shelburne and Zander Reed Herrick of Burlington, and their beloved companions; sister Barbara Benoit of Missouri; brother Loyd Means of Arizona; brother Charles Thomasson of Los Angeles; nieces Alison Bradley, Tammy Means, Rebecca Lee Means and Sandy Contarini; and nephews Phillip Lee Means, Nathan Means and Daniel Lee Weibelt, and their beautiful families. As one of five children from a family of eight siblings, not to mention divorces and remarriages and multiple beloved stepsiblings, there is and was an incredible web of love spun throughout her life, including heart-deep friendships with Harvey and Emris Mason, Rainbow Cornelia, Ruth Solomon and Judith Pelton, the members of her Towanda group of bold women, and so many others, many of whom predeceased her. The presence and help of Robin McClelland and Diana Necrason in her last days and weeks was an incredible gift.
Please celebrate Ginger’s life on Sunday, September 28, 2025, 2 p.m., at the First Unitarian Universalist Society, 152 Pearl St., Burlington, where Ginger was an active member for many years and where she was delighted to attend the annual poetry service, focused on joy, just weeks ago. If you are seeking to make a charitable donation in her honor, a gift to the Joint Urban Ministry Project, the Waldenstrom Macroglobulinemia Foundation or the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington — or, really, any organization working to build a good and loving world — would honor her spirit beautifully.
This article appears in Sep 10-16 2025.