I first met Virgil at a PLA meeting in 1966 in Berkeley. He and LaVada had just returned from Mexico shooting & recording steam there. He walked into the meeting room with this huge sombrero on and smoking this nasty looking twisted cigar. He was a hoot and stayed that way as long as I knew him.
One time @ Castro Point, he asked me over to dinner after I tied up the engine. "Are you a booze hound?", he asked. I said no & then he rolled his eyes, smiled and said "Good, me neither".
Virgil did not have an unkind bone in his body. We differed on some subjects but you could discuss things with him. I sometimes think he liked to offer up oddball comments just to see what kind of reaction this received.
Back in 1996 or so, I was over at their house visiting when he & LaVada left the living room for a minute and returned with two cardboard boxes. After setting them on the floor, Virgil told me it was the late John Hungerford's slide collection & he wanted me to have it. I was bowled over at the gift, but Virgil was that way...he was not hung up on collecting things for himself.
If anyone here remembers phone conversations with him, he always aanswered the phone with "Roundhouse".
God bless you Virgil.