Virginia Hampton Justice, better known to former students and fellow teachers as Mrs. J was born to Robert Bryan and Mayzelle Smith Hampton on November 23, 1925, and went home to be with the Lord on November 7, 2018.

She moved to Chillicothe, Texas, in February 1951 from Fayetteville, Arkansas. She fell in love with her little town and adopted it into her heart as her home town.  She worked 23 years in a local drug store and substituted and taught for 20 years in Chillicothe ISD.

While teaching she organized the Chillicothe Texas Junior Historians #495 with Principal Jerry Baird's help. The students from several classes of Texas History won 21 Texas Junior Historian trophies and plaques for their research on places of interest in Chillicothe, Quanah, and Hardeman County.  Students also won individual trophies with projects entered in the Midwestern State University History Fair.  Her journalism class of 1993 compiled a small book about the history of Chillicothe that was sold as a fundraiser for the school.  That book is still requested by many.

Mrs. Justice also taught journalism at Chillicothe High School where her students won district, regional and state UIL contests.

For many years, she was a member of The Poetry Society of Texas and served as an area councilor for Hardeman and area counties. In 2007 she was presented Honorary Membership in that poetry society.

She placed several poems in the Top Ten of each category of the Poetry Society of Texas annual contests and had many poems published in the society's yearbook. She won first place in a sonnet contest offered by the Texas Federation of Women's Clubs and published that same poem about John F. Kennedy's funeral procession "The Riderless Horse" in the federation's magazine in 1963

Other poems were published in The Texas Baptist Standard and Glenn Shelton's column. She won a Freedom's Foundation plaque for "Visit to a National Cemetery," and she was chosen as the Santa Rosa Texas Federation of Women's Club Poet Laureate.

Justice was a member of Delta Kappa Gamma of Vernon and also a member and officer of the Bluebonnet Study Club for many years under the umbrella of the federation of women's clubs and was selected as the Santa Rosa "Woman of the Year." In 1994 Justice received the Chillicothe Lion's Club Citizen of the Year award.

She was a member of the First Baptist Church of Chillicothe for over 53 years. She worked in Vacation Bible School, taught Sunday School, served on the Kitchen Committee, Home Missions, and helped start a church library for the church and the community with the help of Carol Ann Green and the late Lynette Huse.

Virginia Justice loved her church, teaching young people, and the towns of Chillicothe and Quanah.

She was preceded in death by her parents, a sister Thelma Hampton Egger of California, a brother Elwood Hampton, her sister-in-law Dolly Hampton both of Mena, Arkansas, and her son-in-law Mike Hale of Quanah whom she loved as a son, as well as many nieces and nephews.

She is survived by her daughter, Robbie Justice Hale of Quanah, and a granddaughter Kelsey Hale Sears and her husband Andrew of Plano, Texas

Services will be at 10:00 a.m., Friday, November 9, 2018, at the First Baptist Church of Chillicothe. Interment will follow at Chillicothe Cemetery, under the direction of Smith Funeral Home of Quanah.

Memorials may be given to the First Baptist Churches of Chillicothe and Quanah, the Thompson Sawyer Library of Quanah, or Senior Citizens of Quanah.