(June 1, 2016 - by Harold Goerzen)  Virginia Allen Hartwell, whose husband, Gifford “Giff,” built and engineered Ecuador’s first television station, HCJB-TV, died on Saturday, April 23, at the Barron Center, a care facility in Portland, Maine, just four days after her 98th birthday.

Virginia was born on April 19, 1918, in Newton, Mass., the daughter of Percival and Winifred Allen. She graduated from Newton High School and Lasell Junior College in Auburndale, Mass. Virginia and Giff were married on April 14, 1945.

In 1958 the Hartwells became missionaries with Reach Beyond in Quito. Giff built the equipment for the TV station in his garage in Syracuse, N.Y., while he was an engineer at General Electric. He donated the station to Reach Beyond and was then asked to come to Quito to run it.

In 1958 the Hartwells went to Spanish language school in San José, Costa Rica, then served in Quito for two four-year terms.

While Giff operated the TV station, Virginia produced children’s Spanish TV programs and did puppeteering. She also played the piano, organ and accordion in Ecuadorian churches and taught piano lessons. Their two daughters, Joan and Joyce, went to school at Alliance Academy International in Quito and participated in the programs.

“I remember how much my mother loved the Ecuadorians and her missionary friends,” Joyce related. “She told me that the years in Quito were the best years of her life.”

Reach Beyond retirees Doug and Darlene Peters remember Virginia as being passionate about children finding Christ as their Savior and helping them mature in their faith.

“For several years in the mid-1960s our family attended a Spanish-speaking church in Quito with the Hartwell family,” Darlene shared. “Virginia played the piano for the services and loved to teach Sunday school. This helped us to better know the Hartwells as a family.”

Imogene Booker, also a Reach Beyond retiree, recalled that after she and her late husband, Leonard, arrived in Ecuador as new missionaries in 1962, Virginia asked her to fill in with the children’s programs while she and the family were away on home ministry assignment.

“She carefully explained everything I needed to know and would be responsible for,” Booker noted. “I was very apprehensive, knowing I would have to speak in my poor, inadequate Spanish.... It was a pleasure working together, and we became close friends. Lesson learned: God doesn’t ask us to do something without equipping us to do it. That was just the first time at HCJB that I was asked to do something that I ‘couldn’t do.’ But I did.”

“What the Hartwells did in Ecuador was amazing,” added Ron Cline, a Reach Beyond ambassador and former president of the mission. “People who had only heard the voices on HCJB could now see who the people were and what they were like. His vision gave the missionaries access into the homes of people throughout the city. We became real people.”

After leaving Ecuador in 1967, the Hartwells continued to do representation work for Reach Beyond in the U.S. until leaving the organization about two years later.

Virginia remained active in volunteer children’s work and music accompaniment in churches in California, Massachusetts and Maine. In 2010 she was awarded the “Remember Me Certificate of Lifetime Achievement” in Augusta, Maine.

In addition to her husband, Giff, Virginia was predeceased by her sister, Noel Bastow, and her daughter Joan. She is survived by her daughter Joyce and husband, Larry Pelletier, as well as three grandchildren, Janee, Cara and Jonathan Pelletier.

A celebration of life service is set for 10 a.m. Thursday, June 9, at the Barron Center in Portland, Maine. In lieu of flowers, the family has asked that memorial gifts be sent to World Vision’s Ecuador earthquake relief fund.

Sources: Reach Beyond, A.T. Hutchins Funeral and Cremation Services