Virginia N. "Virgie The Great" Gadiano

Virginia, or Auntie Virginia, Virgie the Great (great grandmother), or simply Grandma, was a contemporary of the Greatest Generation. Born and raised in the Philippine Islands, she was one of six children. She married Gregory Ylauan, Sr., a minister who later joined the U.S. Army. During World War II and the occupation of the Islands by the Japanese, she was a young wife and mother. After the war, the family emigrated to the U.S., sailing by ship to the West Coast and settling in San Pedro, CA.

Virginia then became a divorcée and remarried. She and Maximo Gadiano, a U.S. Navy veteran and former church pastor, moved to Torrance, CA then Redondo Beach, CA where they raised children and grandchildren who also became good parents and hard-working citizens as well as servicemen, ministers, and missionaries. Their church was in Gardena, CA where they were active members.

Like the wife of noble character in Proverbs 31 of the Bible, she was a woman of dignity, had a strong work ethic, was compassionate, selfless, giving to others of her time and possessions, tireless, a gifted and creative seamstress and craftswoman, and shared her life lessons and wisdom. She learned courage, had musical and culinary talents, was conversant in three languages, and was not without a sense of humor.

This mother of eight was always engaged in life and her family. She was often reading, always self-educating, and sometimes enterprising. Gifted with a green thumb, she enjoyed working in her garden where everything, both the planted and unplanned, somehow thrived. She jogged at the beach while in her sixties and seventies, worked part-time till her eighties, then suffered a stroke in her nineties but lived to be over 100 years old.