During her many years as a public health nurse, Virginia W. Backlund kept schoolchildren healthy, educated people about tuberculosis and eye and hearing exams, helped administer the polio vaccine, and gave lectures and taught classes for expectant mothers and caretakers of the sick.
Mrs. Backlund died at home in East Hampton on Feb. 15. She was 101.
She was born in Westhampton on Jan. 25, 1921, to Charles Wright and the former Helen Goldsmith. A 1938 graduate of Westhampton Beach High School, she went on to attend Simmons College in Boston.
Ginny, as she was known, moved to East Hampton after graduating from nursing school in the early 1940s. In 1944, she took a position at the Amagansett School. She met and married Alfred King in 1946. He was proprietor of the Marmador restaurant in East Hampton Village; Mrs. King, as she was then known, helped run the restaurant in addition to working as a nurse.
She often visited schools from Montauk to Mattituck, and her students were fond of her, her family said. In 1957, she became one of the first nurses to administer the polio vaccine, according to her family, and a career highlight came in 1964, when the East Hampton Town Board presented her with a commendation for her many contributions as a public health nurse.
Mr. King died in a moped accident in 1980. In 1992, Mrs. Backlund married Vaughn Backlund. He died in 2006.
Mrs. Backlund was a member of the Garden Club of East Hampton, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Salvation Army. She was secretary of the Community Council of East Hampton.
Her four siblings died before her. Her surviving relatives are two nieces, Jill Wells of Chandler, Ariz., and Gale Denny of Sag Harbor; two great-nieces, Joanne Westervelt of Shelter Island and Maria Huether of West Palm Beach, Fla., and three great-nephews, Paul Denny of Vero Beach, Fla., David Denny of Sag Harbor, and Joseph Denny of Shelter Island.
Memorial donations have been suggested to East End Hospice, online at eeh.org, or a charity of one’s choosing. Mrs. Backlund was buried at Oakland Cemetery in Sag Harbor.
