January 23, 1936 – March 1, 2026

After struggling with declining health for two years, Virginia Herman Thelin passed away at her home in South Lake Tahoe, California. She was 90 years old. In her youth, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from MIT and spent time in Türkiye, Poland, Finland and Greece. Virginia met and married her husband Mark Thelin, and spent many years living in Taiwan with him where they raised two sons, Carl and Eric who have survived her. In the 1980s she began working for the Fulbright Foundation, which she continued to do until her retirement in 1999. She and her husband left Taiwan, and earned master’s degrees in Archeology from Durham University in England. While there, Mark’s health declined, and the couple moved to Grinnell Iowa, where Mark passed away in 2014. Since then, Virgina became a resident of South Lake Tahoe, where she frequently spent several hours a day hiking with her dog.
She was co-author of “The Good Life”(1975), author of “Taichung Harbor Area Land Use Survey”(1978) and a master’s dissertation entitled “Were Burnt Mounds Derived from Prehistoric Copper Production Activities?”(2008). She was preceded in death by her brothers Fred Hermann Jr, and Robert Hermann. Donations may be made in her name to the Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine or the Southern Poverty Law Center.
A memorial service will be held at Hope Lutheran Church of the Sierra on Saturday June 20th, at 10am. (930 Julie Ln, South Lake Tahoe, CA 96150)