Ellen Virginia Putnam

Ellen Virginia “Ginny” Putnam, age 95, passed away on Sunday, March 12, 2023 in Mission Viejo, California.

She was born November 21, 1927 in rural Killarm, Marion County, West Virginia, to parents Lee Roy Glover and Ruby Beatrice Everson Glover. At age fifteen, “Jenny” as she was known by her WV family, left for the nearby ‘big city’ of Fairmont, and two years later took off for the excitement of the ‘really big city’ of New York where she found success as a fashion model. After a brief early marriage, she relocated to Southern California in 1951 where she married George Putnam who had been a well-known New York radio personality and early television pioneer and became a legendary local TV news anchor and conservative radio talk show host.

In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by her beloved younger sister and best friend Barbara Glover Rombola of Fairmont, West Virginia, sisters Mary Jane Glover Serian, Francie Glover Mullins and Eltha Glover Davis, and her estranged husband George of Chino, California.

A beloved mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, daughter, granddaughter and friend, Ginny is survived by daughters Jan Putnam (Wendell Macklin) of Irvine, California and Jil John of Kearney, Nebraska, granddaughters Jennifer John of Cibolo, Texas and Jessica John of Kearney, and grandson Tommy S. John III of Castaic, California, as well as several nieces and nephews.

Admired for her great natural beauty and innate sense of style and good taste, she will be remembered most of all for her warmth, kindness, graciousness, humility, humor and fair-mindedness… and always looking for the inherent goodness in others.

After her long battle with Alzheimer’s, we are so grateful that she went soaring into the heavens peacefully and without pain. She will be deeply missed and will live on in our hearts forever.

Services will be private.

Contributions may be made to alzheimers.org.