Editor’s Note: Loretta Fulton’s biography, “Virginia Connally, M.D.: Trailblazing Physician, Woman of Faith,” is available at Texas Star Trading Co., 174 Cypress St., Abilene, or by contacting Loretta Fulton, editor@spiritofabilene.com

Dr. Virginia Boyd Connally, Abilene’s first female physician, died at 7:34 a.m. Sunday, March 31.

A grandson, Sid Roberts, texted that Connally had died in an inpatient hospice center in Waco. Since October 2018, Connally had lived at Stoney Brook of Hewitt, a retirement facility near Waco, where her daughter, Genna, lives. Connally was 106. She opened her office in Abilene in September 1940.

Virginia Connally

Born Ada Virginia Hawkins in Temple Dec. 4, 1912, she enrolled in Hardin-Simmons University as a sophomore in 1930. After graduating in June 1933 with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and education, she married Fred Boyd that September. Both enrolled in the LSU School of Medicine that September. Virginia earned a bachelor’s degree in medicine in 1937.

Connally served an internship at Charity Hospital in New Orleans and earned a doctor of medicine in 1938. After serving a residency at Charity Hospital, she returned to Abilene to open her office in the Mims Building.

Read Loretta Fulton‘s complete story in the Reporter-News.