Virginia Elizabeth Hoggan Wright

Virginia Elizabeth Hoggan Wright passed away at her home in Holladay with her family present on June 9, 2020, after suffering for over three years from Parkinson's and related illnesses.

Jinny was the daughter of Edward Dale Hoggan and Ruth Platt Hoggan. She served as a typist in her father's advertising agency until he retired and closed his business, after which time she worked for several other organizations as a secretary.

Jinny graduated from East high School in 1951 and attended fall quarter at the University of Utah beginning in September of that year.

Jinny married her husband, Darrel Kent Wright, in the summer of 1952, shortly after he returned from military service during the Korean War. After Kent's graduation from the University of Utah in 1955, the couple and their two children moved to California, where Kent had been assigned a position as an engineer with Hughes Aircraft Company. In 1955 Jinny, Kent, and their (by then) three children moved back to the Salt Lake City area.

Jinny was physically active her entire life from the time she was a toddler until late in her life. She became an accomplished skier capable of handling moderate black diamond terrain, but usually made many more tight turns going down a ski run than most skiers with her ability would choose. Beginning in the 1970s, skiing became a big winter family event. During the 1980 winter season alone, Jinny, Kent, and four of their children used 80 day passes at local ski resorts. In the following years, social events and traveling made less time to ski available. However, skiing continued to provide one of Jinny's and Kent's major means of surviving the winter's cold until about ten years later. Jinny broke her ankle by tripping on a floor mat at home, and all thoughts about ever going skiing again were shattered.

Jinny was an accomplished seamstress. She sewed dresses for her daughters when they went to elementary school and mastered the techniques required to create clothing from the newly-invented synthetic fabrics introduced during the Middle 1900s. She also became an expert tailor and created and sold coats made from the synthetic suede fabric Ultra-Suede.

After all of her children entered elementary school, Jinny found employment in retail fabric stores, where she learned about the many different weaves and fabrics of cloth material being imported from China and other foreign sources. Jinny had the natural ability to visualize how a given dress or blouse pattern should be altered to perfectly fit the body of the female person for which it was intended. She acquired as a hobby dozens of different paper dress patterns, and used one or more of these patterns to fit customers who came to her for blouses and other items.

Jinny was a graduate of the University of Utah with a BS degree in Family and Consumer Studies, where she was elected to the predecessor of the current department honor society. After graduating, Jinny continued to improve her education by attending University art classes and by participating in dozens of art workshops. She traveled to a two-week watercolor session in Italy conducted by the notable teacher Willamarie Huelescamp. She also took private art lessons from one of Utah’s most renowned artists, Ian Ramsay. In addition to her other affiliations, Jinny was a member of the Intermountain Society of Artists and the Sandy Watercolor Guild and was a two-star member of the Utah Watercolor Society.

Jinny exhibited her paintings in many art shows in the Salt Lake area, including libraries, art galleries, government buildings, and hospitals. Some of these shows contained works by several artists, while a number of them featured Jinny’s art by itself or along with the works of two or three other artists.

Jinny chose a wide variety of subjects for her paintings including landscapes, mountain and beach scenes, architectural structures, flowers, birds and animals, people, and still lifes. At various times Jinny painted with oils and acrylics, but she preferred watercolor and used it exclusively after she discovered that it had no disagreeable odors to inhale. She loved to experiment with watercolors on different base materials such as Yupo (a form of plastic paper), Aquaboard (coated Masonite), and rice paper, as well as on the traditional variations of watercolor paper. She painted mostly bright colors and refused to paint any subject that she regarded as depressing.

Jinny received many First Place and lesser awards for paintings that she exhibited in art show competitions. Notable among these honors is the Juror’s Recognition Award from one of the Annual Utah Statewide Art Competitions held at the Eccles Art Center in Ogden, Utah. She was also honored by the selection of one of her paintings to be part of a year-long traveling exhibition sponsored by the Salt Lake County Library System.

Jinny's survivors include:

husband, Kent; sons Randall Sinclair Wright and Alan Edward Wright from the Salt Lake City, UT, area; daughter Shari Lynn Wright Knighton and son-in-law Clark Knighton from Portland, OR; daughter Shawna Erin Wright, Holladay, UT; daughter Tricia E. Wright, M.D., from San Francisco, CA; sister Sondra Lynn Hoggan Ward and brother-in-law Richard Ward from St. Joseph, MI; seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren; and nieces, nephews, and cousins too numerous to list.

Jinny was preceded in death by her sister Cheryl Ann Hoggan Bleakney from Seattle, WA.