- Date Of Birth: November 4, 1915
- Date Of Death: December 17, 2010
- State: Georgia
Rachel Pinson Van Tuyl, 95, longtime resident of Menlo Park, CA died Friday, December 17, 2010 at Wesley Woods of Newnan, GA. She was born November 4, 1915 in Newnan, GA to the late Ben Hill Pinson & Martha Lavonia Hays Pinson.
In addition to her parents, she was preceded in death by husband Russell Murray Van Tuyl and sister Martha Pinson Lanum. Mrs. Van Tuyl was born in Newnan and her family moved to LaGrange, GA where her father ran a division of Callaway Mills.
Her father moved the family to Chicago in 1929 when he opened a new office for Callaway. Prior to her marriage, she worked for the Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In Chicago in 1938, she married United Airlines Pilot Russell Murray Van Tuyl who became a World War II pilot and Navy Captain based at Maryland’s Patuxant Naval Air Station before returning to United Airlines in Chicago. In the early 1950’s, United moved them to the San Francisco Bay area where they made their home for almost 50 years. Mrs. Van Tuyl was a championship amateur golfer and an award winning Bonsai and rose gardener. She was also instrumental in the fundraising for the Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park, CA, the chief beneficiary of which is the Children’s Hospital at the Stanford University Medical Center. Proud of her Georgia roots, she with her husband, returned to her childhood homes of LaGrange and Newnan in 2000. The Pinson side of her family had settled in Newnan in the 1820’s after a long, arduous covered wagon journey from southern Virginia in 1825. Her father, a skilled amateur golfer himself and a golfing friend of Bobby Jones, was a founding member of the Newnan Country Club, helped design and develop the golf course and was its first president. Her maternal grandfather, James Hays, a planter of Montezuma, GA was the first person to introduce the sweet potato into the United States.
Survivors include niece, Christine Lanum Shaw of Lake Forest, IL; nephew, Scott Blake Lanum of Rockville, MD; and great-niece, Rachel Christine Shaw of Denver, CO.
