In 1928, the Uptons moved to St. Louis, where Virginia excelled at Roosevelt High School.  She enrolled at Harris Teacher’s College (now Harris-Stowe State University) and graduated valedictorian in 1935.  At the height of the Depression, even teaching jobs were difficult to acquire, so Virginia began working in the advertising department of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat.  Her marriage to Carl Richards, in September 1936, ended her teaching prospects in St. Louis, as the local Board of Education did not permit married women to teach.

After the birth of their first child, Charles, in 1942, the Richards’ moved to Chicago in 1944 and then to Palos Heights in 1945.  In her interview, Virginia humorously relates how she and her husband acquired the Regional:

     [Harwell West] was the original owner, and he published it for five years as a monthly publication.  It was just a little booklet.  Then one day, the Regional came out and he said that he was going to have to
     cease publication because he was too busy to keep it up.  It was just a sideline with him.  So my husband says, ‘I’m going over to talk to that guy.’  Stupid me, I didn’t know what was up.  He came back and
     he says, ‘I bought the Regional.’  I said, ‘You did what!’  ‘I bought the Regional for $100.’  I said, ‘What are we going to do?’  ‘Well, we got to get busy!’

     So the next morning, I got on the phone and called everybody, heads of all the organizations and everybody I could think of, for news and I told them to bring their news to us.  We operated off the dining
     room table for about a year…We started once a month, and then we changed to a weekly and kept going and growing.

Many years later, the Regional News still serves the community of Palos Heights, with the journalistic legacy carried on by Amy Richards.  Readers can catch reprints of Virginia Richards’ column each week, along with that of Carl Richards, “Paragraphs from This Old Stump.”

- Virginia Richards, interviewed February 19, 1977 for the Moraine Valley Oral History Association by Mary LePenske; interview transcribed by Shirley Miller.  From the Palos Heights Public Library Local History Collection.