Eminent Homemaker
County: Fall River
Virginia Anderson of Oral is a leader with a flair for innovation. She has been a positive influence on her family and community and has helped provide a secure home for her husband and three sons.
She is described by friends as one who looks for inspiration in others and herself, no matter where she is. She looks for self-growth each day, and freely invests her time and energies into family and community. She is a person who helps family members and others around her recognize their strengths and potential.
For the past 46 years, she has actively managed the Anderson farm and has been an innovator in crop selection and alternative enterprises. The Anderson family has constantly searched for new and better ways of farming by experimenting with new crops and livestock projects.
She is currently working with her son, Bob, on a pheasant hunting lodge operation. A flock of 500 hen pheasants serves as the foundation of the business. The Andersons incubate eggs, sell chicks and live and dressed birds and offer hunting.
Anderson is known in her community as a leader and a doer. She as served in local, state, and national leadership positions in the Extension Homemakers organization, and has regularly participated in the Plunge to Pierre, University Week for Women and Family Community Leadership conferences. She has been an active supporter of 4-H.
As a member of the United Methodist Church in Hot Springs, she has served as Sunday school superintendent and taught Sunday school classes. She was also active in PTA.
Anderson was instrumental in organizing local and area prisoner of war support groups. Through these groups, she has had a national impact on prisoner of war programs through the Veterans Administration.
Virginia and her husband Charles have three sons: Leslie, Chicago, Illinois, Craig, Spearfish and Robert, Oral.