In Memoriam: Virginia "Tim" Craig

Tim Craig: December 1912 - Sept. 23, 2002, (Duxbury, Massachusetts)
Tim Craig joined the ARS Massachusetts Chapter in 1970, shortly after the chapter was founded. For nearly thirty years she was one of its most active members. Perhaps no one in the chapter worked longer or harder to assure the success of the chapter and the Society. For many years she was the most effective recruiter of new members in her chapter. Many longtime members of the chapter give her credit for drawing them into the world of rhododendrons in general and into activities of the ARS in particular. While she held many offices in the Massachusetts Chapter and in District 6, she was a person who involved herself energetically in any activity she thought worth doing - whether she had a formal title or not.

She worked on the chapter board, on the Rosebay magazine, as an organizer of the rhododendron display at the New England Flower Show, as District 6 Director, as promoter of plants-for-members programs in several chapters, as organizer of the Species Study Group in her chapter, as a member of the International Convention Planning Committee, as a trustee of the ARS Research Foundation, as a member of the Public Relations Committee, as a leader of the Dexter Study Group on Cape Cod (which helped save and identify many Dexter hybrids), as registrar for the annual Truss Show of the Massachusetts Chapter and doubtless in many other activities, formal and informal. She was, in short, indefatigable! And, at the end, she endowed a rhododendron fund to beautify the campus of Mount Holyoke College.

She was awarded the Bronze Medal of the ARS Massachusetts Chapter in 1985. The chapter created the annual Tim Craig Species Award in her honor in 2002. And, what must have pleased her the most, Weldon Delp named rhododendron 'Tim Craig' in her honor.

Her vigor and vitality will not soon be seen again.