PERSONALITIES: Once an outdoors girl, always an outdoors girl

Mar. 18—Virginia "Ginny" Apple of Barkhamsted has loved nature and athletics from a young age, and after years working in male-dominated sports journalism in the 1970s, she switched careers and is now a volunteer representative of the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection who gives presentations about wildlife.

"My granddaddy was a famous cattle auctioneer that lived on a big farm/ranch in McKinney (Texas)," Apple said. "I spent most of my growing up riding horses and hanging out in nature in the country there. It was very idyllic growing up in Texas.

"My Granddaddy Apple was written up in Parade and Life Magazine as an auctioneer," she said, adding he would auction off cattle at such notable ranches as King Ranch and the LBJ Ranch.

"When the University of Texas in the late '40s had all these oil land leases and they were trying to sell them, they called my granddaddy, the cattle auctioneer, and he started getting millions and millions of dollars," Apple said.

GINNY APPLE

Who she is: Frequent lecturer on Connecticut wilddlife. Former sportswriter for the Hartford Courant.

Her father, she said, was a country doctor and a bomber for the Army Air Corps during World War II.

Apple considered being a forest ranger early in her childhood, but decided at about age 9 she wanted to join the FBI after reading "The FBI Story" by Don Whitehead.

"I wrote J. Edgar Hoover (FBI director) a letter and I got a handwritten letter back with all of these brochures that said, 'Women in the FBI' and it had them at filing cabinets and typewriters," she said. "I got so mad, I threw it. I still have it."

Dismissing the FBI because of its sexist policies, Apple decided she instead would be a sports writer.

"I had an uncle in McKinney, Texas, who was a sports writer and I started covering sports in junior high and in high school," she said. "Plano was the winningest football team in the state at the time, won many state championships, and I would cover the games and go to the Richardson newspaper, which is between Plano and Dallas, and put my stories under the door Friday night after the games. That's how I got my start in journalism."

The idea that sports journalism had its own problems with women in the workplace hadn't crossed Apple's mind.

"I think until I got to college, I didn't realize we were integrated when I was really young," she said. "My town was one of the first towns to integrate seamlessly in the South. I didn't realize there were things that girls weren't supposed to do. I was shocked."

In the early 1970s, she attended the University of Oklahoma, where she was named sports editor for the university newspaper for three years.

"We were national champions when I was there in football and in wrestling and gymnastics," she said. "When I went to apply for my Sugar Bowl credentials for the national championship — we played Auburn that year in 1972 — I got a letter saying no women were allowed in the press box and I was devastated.

"I'd already been in the Cotton Bowl press box," she said. "I had just met Neil Amdur, who was sports editor for many years at the New York Times, and Pat Putnam, who was a writer for Sports Illustrated. They told me, 'Send us your articles, we'll read them.'

"I sent them and they critiqued them and then they somehow found out about me not being allowed in the press box. They wrote letters to the Sugar Bowl officials and said if they didn't let me in, they wouldn't cover the game, which, you know they would. I had credentials driven to me the next day from New Orleans."

She said that when she arrived at the press box, it was an unforgettable experience. "I opened the elevator and all you saw was smoke, just total smoke and then all these men just looking at me. When I was writing my story, they're looking over my shoulder, wondering whose secretary I was."

After graduating with a bachelor's degree in journalism, a friend recommended she transfer to the University of Bridgeport to earn a master's degree in American literature.

"My friend had told me to go to the University of Bridgeport if you're majoring in American Lit, because they have all these special guys that are world-renowned and I did learn a lot there," she said.

From there she transferred to Columbia University for a master's in journalism, she said, but dropped out because she was hired by the Hartford Courant as a sports reporter.

"I was working for the Courant and still going to Columbia," she said, "but then found, do I really need the degree? You don't get paid extra for it."

She said she worked for about 12 years at the Courant, from 1974 to 1986, until the Los Angeles Times bought the paper.

"I started doing some writing for them," she said, but became dissatisfied with the pay and decided to go into communications.

"I had various jobs at different colleges, director of PR and worked at a couple of magazines," she said.

She ultimately settled down working for the Connecticut Judicial Branch, where she stayed for almost 20 years, retiring in November 2017.

"I started out as manager of communications and then I moved over into doing some IT communications," she said. "I was the branch historian and photographer."

In 2005, she moved to Barkhamsted, where she started spotting black bears and became involved with CT DEEP as a volunteer, reporting her observations.

"The program's really important because the biologists in the wildlife division are really overworked," she said. "Laura Rogers-Castro, she created this master wildlife conservation program to train people that had an interest to come in and they could be volunteers for DEEP and give talks and volunteer."

Since then she has given a number of presentations, she said, using material mostly provided by the master wildlife program, and some she developed herself on animals such as the black bear, bobcats, bald eagles, deer, and fisher.

"I wrote a beaver talk, which is really, really popular," Apple said. "I wrote a talk called 'Things That Go Bump the Night.' I basically wrote this talk because I got tired of going to places and people saying, 'Boy, I heard a fisher cat yelling last night,' and I said, 'First of all, it's a fisher, it's a weasel. It's not a cat and they hardly make a sound at all. They growl. A lot of people hear these strange noises at night and they think it's something else. It's always a red fox. A red fox has about 40 different vocalizations.

"I do everything from owls to fox, to bear to raccoons, anything that makes noises at night. It's a pretty popular talk."

Her most recent talk was at the Manchester Public Library this week, where she talked about living with wildlife.

Recently turning 72, Apple said doing the presentations helps keep her brain fresh.

"I'll probably just keep on doing it as long as I can," she said. "I'm a real nature girl. I love the environment and I love to share the environment. I've climbed all the mountains over 4,000 feet in New England and the Adirondacks. I'm out in the woods five times a week and I have a 16-pound canoe.

"Nature's really good for your spirit and your soul and your health," she said. "I like to share how lucky we are in Connecticut to have all of the animals and the beautiful, natural spots that have hiking trails and everything for such a small state."

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