Virginia Prince (1912 - 2009)

Helen Boyd wrote in her blog en|Gendered…

“Dr. Richard Docter announced at dinner last night, here at the Liberty Conference, that Virginia Prince had died at the age of 96. She was in good health and mentally acute until about a month ago when her health began a steep decline. Docter was her biographer as a well as a friend.”

She was a true pioneer. I remember meeting her up at Fantasia Fair in 2002; she left a lasting impression on me. The first time that I met her was at a workshop for planning your transition and she let us all know in no uncertain terms what she thought about GRS.
It is the end of an era.

Here is her biography…

Virginia Prince (Arnold Lowman ) was born November 23rd 1912 in Los Angeles and she started to crossdress and go out in public as a teenager.
In 1939 she got her PhD in pharmacology from the University of California, San Francisco.
In 1960, she started publishing, Tranvestia, for as she called it, heterosexual femmiphiles.
In 1961 Prince began to meet other transgender individuals in the Los Angeles area and formed the Hose and Heels club.
In 1962, the club went national and was know as Foundation for Full Personality Expression, (FPE or Phi Pi Epsilon). Its members were heterosexual and married: homosexuals and transsexuals were not admitted.
In the mid 1960s, Prince was arrested and found guilty of sending obscene material (Letters to a friend about crossdressing - in those days, just talking about crossdressing was considered pornographic) through the post. As part of her probation, she could not crossdress in public, but her lawyers got an exception if she was educating the public about cross-dressing.
In 1976, FPE eventually became the Society for the Second Self, or 'Tri-Ess' when it merged with another Californian group.
In 1979 she wrote, "I was then free to live my life as I wanted having no domestic or business responsibilities. I therefore crossed the line completely and have lived as a woman full time ever since. I am therefore to be classified as a 'transgenderist' now.”
In 1987, she was the first recipient of the Virginia Prince Lifetime Service Award, sponsored by the International Foundation for Gender Education (IFGE).

Reference:
“Pioneers of Transgendering: The Life and Work of Virginia Prince” By Dave King & Richard Ekins
Gender Variant Biography: Virginia Prince (1912 -). pharmacologist, grooming products retailer, femmiphilic organizer.
Stryker, Susan (May 1, 2008), "Transgender History," Seal Press