CRIBBEN, Virginia Hamlin of Weston and West Falmouth, beloved wife of Austin J. Cribben for 75 years, died on October 24, 2015 at the age of 96.
Born in Medford, MA , she attended Needham public schools and later Northfield/Mt Herman and Maine Central Academy where she graduated. She often shared her many happy memories of summers spent tenting at Lake Shore Park on Lake Winnipesauke, NH where she made lifelong friends. In 1940 she married Austin and they raised three children, living in Brockton during the war years, while Austin served with the army in Germany. In 1952 the family moved to Weston, MA where her children graduated from school, and where she played an active role in the community.
A long time member of the Women’s Community League and Garden Club, she later helped organize the local self-help chapter of the Neuropathy Association of New York at the Weston Council on Aging and sang with the Golden Tones, a Wayland chorus. She pursued a variety of professional careers, including working for the Polaroid Corporation as a Quality Control Division photographer, as well as positions in retail, banking and real estate. Later she volunteered as a telephone mediator in the Consumer Complaints Division of the Attorney General’s Office. She became a volunteer reader for the blind, training at the Massachusetts Association for the Blind, and was a volunteer reader for a blind student at Mt Ida College in Newton. She especially enjoyed volunteering as a reader and story teller for kindergarten through second grade students at the Hardy School in Wellesley. In 1979 she and Austin, then a partner at the Boston architectural firm of Hoyle, Doran and Berry, purchased a summer home near the beach in West Falmouth and joined the Bowerman’s Beach Club, which allowed for frequent visits from her children, their spouses and grandchildren. In Falmouth she continued to volunteer, at the Falmouth Hospital and as a reader to the Blind via radio broadcasts for Audible Local Ledger in Falmouth. An avid traveler, Virginia and her husband made many trips throughout the Caribbean, and were particularly fond of Anguilla and Bermuda. They also made many trips to Europe, especially Spain, as well as the southwest of the US. Virginia was a lifelong, if not encyclopedic, reader of all manner of books and was particularly fond of biographies. She was a frequent visitor to the Weston and West Falmouth libraries. She played the piano and organ, and with her husband enjoyed skiing, golf and gardening.
She is survived by her husband Austin and son, Dennis A Cribben (Lucy Cribben), and was predeceased by her son Stephen H. Cribben (Joan Cribben) of Sherborn, MA and daughter Carol Cribben Merrill (Richard Merrill) of West Brooksville, Maine. She leaves 5 grandchildren: Kelley, Trevor, Catherine, Sorcha, and Hillary; and two greatgrandchildren, Austin Dagwood and Maribel. Virginia was the sister of the late Robert W. Hamlin.
Funeral services will be held in Burt Chapel of Village Congregational Church, 2 Central St., Wellesley on Wed. Oct. 28th at 11AM. Private interment is at Linwood Cemetery, Weston. Expressions of sympathy may be made in her memory to the Weston Town Council on Aging, 20 Alphabet Lane, Weston, MA 02493 or the Neuropathy Association, 60 East 42 Street, Suite 942, New York, NY 10165.