Virginia Hovenden Soutter
Date of Passing:
VIRGINIA HOVENDEN SOUTTER, June 12, 1934-January 12, 2026
Virginia Hovenden Soutter, known as Ginny, died at home on Monday, January 12, 2026 at age 91, surrounded by family.
Born June 12, 1934 to Thomas H. and Ann (Shaffer) Hovenden, Ginny was raised in New Canaan, CT with her younger sister Alice. Ginny was a 1952 graduate of the Low Heywood school where she played three varsity sports, and a 1956 graduate of Skidmore College, where her classmates remembered her as “our smiling satirist….spirited, sociable, with the right amount of savoir-faire.” Shortly after graduation, she married Thomas Douglas Soutter and embarked on a life of partnership, family, community, and creativity.
While Tom served shipboard in the US Navy out of Coronado, CA, Ginny taught nursery school and diagnosed reading disabilities. In Charlottesville, VA, while Tom studied law, Ginny taught kindergarten and served as administrator to the UVA campus newspaper. After six years in New York, Tom joined Textron; Ginny and Tom moved their young family to Barrington in 1968.
As she raised three children, Ginny also served actively in the League of Women Voters and Save the Bay, the local PTA, and on Democratic political campaigns locally and nationally. In Providence, she was committed to women’s literacy, serving as a board member and prolific fundraiser at Dorcas Place Adult and Family Literacy Center (before it became Dorcas International). She worked for years championing sex education and family planning at Planned Parenthood Rhode Island.
Ginny was a longtime Associate of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, with a special love of Pendleton House, and over the course of fifty years supported historic preservation in Barrington, Providence, and Warren. She brought style and a great eye to all that she did. She and Tom enjoyed a lifetime of travel, including decades of sailing with close friends. She was a graceful athlete and one of the world’s foremost animal lovers, at her happiest with a dog or a cat on her lap. She enjoyed living in Warren since 2014, and was a seasonal resident of Little Compton.
Ginny’s friendships were deeply important to her, from childhood and Navy days through collaborating in parenthood, from exploring ideas and the world together through providing companionship in widowhood. Ginny and Tom were proud to raise their children among a host of families who loved the outdoors, treasured learning, served community, and prized independent thinking. Those family friendships, and values, endure across three generations.
Above all, Ginny loved her family. She and Tom shared a joyful marriage of 57 years before Tom’s death in 2013. Ginny took boundless pride from her three children, six grandchildren, and their partners: Sam and Carline Soutter, Hayley Soutter and fiancé Matt Hoey, Emily and Sawyer Umstead, Eliza Soutter; Andy and Maureen Soutter, Madeline and Johnny McNamara, Christopher Soutter; Hadley and Peter Arnold, Josie Arnold and fiancé Gus Sigel. Ginny cherished her sister Alice Fink, of Newton Centre, MA, and Alice’s family.
A service will be held in the spring. In lieu of flowers, tributes may be made to the Soutter Family Fund at the Rhode Island Foundation.
What a lady! And what an accomplished, radiant and wonderful family she has carrying on her legacy.
May her memory be a blessing!