The recent passing of two long-time Creston Valley residents serves to remind of just how diverse and endlessly fascinating our community is. Virginia Paccassi Naeve and John Edge-Partington could not have been more different in personality, and I associate both with how easily we came to love this place we call home.
Virginia and Lowell Naeve moved to the Creston Valley in 1981, two years after we arrived here, and I suspect we first met their daughter, Serena, and her then husband, Howard, at a memorable pottery show at the Community Complex.
I often speak of my fondness for learning more about peoples’ pasts over the years I know them, and Virginia may well have been the model that gave me such an appreciation. Of course we would learn early of the life she and Lowell had shared in Quebec, because that’s where they came from, and I always have asked newcomers how they arrived in Creston and where they arrived from. Lowell spoke of driving in from the east on Highway 3, seeing the Creston Valley open up in front of them, and immediately feeling like they had found home. In Quebec, they had operated a summer children’s camp. We came to know Virginia as an artist and Lowell as a printer, and both as a lovers of books. When the Iron Curtain fell, Lowell published a tiny book of writings by Czech writer and leader Vaclav Havel, and I was thrilled when he gave me a copy.
Over the years, their previous accomplishments slowly revealed themselves to us. Virginia’s success as an artist, their participation in the peace movement, their passion for politics and especially people who are disadvantaged and disenfranchised all resonated. I think it was only after the story aired on the Oprah Winfrey Show that I came to appreciate the legacy of Virginia’s Box Project, which organized families in the northern, more affluent, regions of the United States to pack up clothing, books and food to donate to poor Southern black families, often creating lifelong connections in the process. Lowell’s death last year and Virginia’s passing last month both came after lengthy illnesses of the sort that can be expected of people who live well into their 90s. They left remarkable legacies, and their long presence among us serves as a reminder that we are truly blessed to share a community with such unique characters.
John Edge-Partington was well known in the Creston Valley long before we arrived here in the late 1970s, and I think we first met at a winter party in Riverview at the solar home of architect Arnie Fullerton. Angela and I purchased a building lot on Phillips Road from Arnie and we would soon be living just around the hill from the dairy farm operated by John and his wife, Jean.
In John, I saw the quintessential Englishman gentleman, and was always reminded of my own grandfather. I got to know him better when I joined the Creston Rotary Club and enjoyed conversations with a man who had a genuine love for his vocation. He was a man who loved helping others, and Rotary was a perfect outlet. I doubt there was anyone in the club who raised his hand more often and more quickly to volunteer. He was always happy to participate in the annual radio auction, and it became a bit of a running joke among members when he started to get donations of manure, hay and even bull calves. Club members used to joke about buying them for each other. I dreamed of buying a bull calf and having it delivered to my friend Rand Archibald’s home on Scott Street.
John and Jean loved to travel, and they were able to do that more often when their son Robin moved back to Creston. In recent years, with John in his 80s, they made annual trips to Honduras in the winter to help out with Rotary projects. Throughout the year John worked to collect donated musical instruments so that school children would have to opportunity to learn to play music. For many years he was a member of the Blossom Valley Singers, and he also became a hospice volunteer.
John Edge-Partington was my favourite kind of person. He was a leader by example and never looked for attention for the many acts of kindness he routinely did for others. He took on everything he did with enthusiasm, and it was contagious.
I am truly grateful for having been part of a community that was enriched by these friends, and I thank Virginia and John, and their families, for their many contributions.
