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By Brent Hoffmann, Class of 2005

When asked about her favorite tour, long-time docent Virginia Gerst recalled, “I had a great time on a private tour arranged by the Catalina Island Museum for Art and History in California.  The visitors were members of the William Wrigley family who were taking a ‘roots’ tour of Chicago to see sites in the life of their patriarch.  Wrigley had been a member of the Chicago Athletic Association, so I showed them around the CAA Hotel on Michigan Avenue.  They loved the original CAA logo, which, only slightly altered, became the logo of the Chicago Cubs, the baseball team that Wrigley had owned.  They were a bright, interested group with lots of questions, but one stumped me. ‘What sport,’ someone asked, ‘did William play?’

“I knew the CAA well as I’d researched its history in helping develop the CAC tour of the hotel,” she continued.  “Also, my father was a member of the Chicago Athletic Association, and my wedding rehearsal dinner was in one of the ballrooms.”

Journalism

Virginia is a writer and journalist.  She earned a BA from Vassar College with a major in sociology, plus drama and theater, with a minor in history.  She explained, “I originally selected Vassar, in part, because of its fine drama department.  Also, Eero Saarinen designed one of the dorms, which I found way more appealing than a stodgy ivy hall.”

For 17 years, Virginia was the arts and entertainment editor of the North Shore and Lake County editions of Pioneer Press, a chain of newspapers in the Chicago suburbs.  “My section covered music, theater, visual arts, restaurants, film — all the fun things,” she said.  “I personally reviewed restaurants and theater and supervised a small and very merry staff.”  Under her leadership, the section twice won the Suburban Newspaper Association’s award as the best entertainment section in the country.

“In 2004, I left Pioneer over an ethical disagreement – being the paper’s ethics, not mine,” she said.  Virginia was subsequently named winner of the Chicago Headline Club’s Ethics in Journalism Award and the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism from the University of Oregon.  Said Michael Miner, editor of the Chicago Reader, “Journalism is parched for honor, and Virginia Gerst is a glass of water.”

“I then tried freelance writing, but found it isolating,” she continued.  “I was looking for something to do that brought me in contact with a diverse group of people and provided an opportunity for learning.  CAC did both of those things and more.  Being a docent is a gift. I would walk over coals to be part of the group.”

Cemeteries

Virginia is the co-tour director of the Gold Coast: Astor Street, Dearborn Street, and Monadnock building tours.  She also leads the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, Navy Pier, Old Post Office, Treasures, Graceland and Rosehill Cemeteries tours. Of the Old Post Office, she said, “The building’s such a dazzler. I can just say, ‘Look at that’ and jaws drop.

“I’m a real junkie on cemeteries,” continued Virginia.  “I never visit a city without checking in with its dearly departed.”  She recommends visits to Highgate Cemetery in London and the Cementerio General in Santiago, Chile.  “Absolutely fabulous” is Moscow’s Novodevichy Cemetery, with its graves of Nikita Khrushchev, Boris Yeltsin, writer Leo Tolstoy, playwright Anton Chekhov, and Russian cosmonauts.  “And I just returned from Turkey, where I toured the site of King Mausolus’ tomb, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and the origin of the term ‘mausoleum,’ which dovetails nicely with our Graceland tour.”

Beyond Docenting

She helped establish Chicago’s Green City Market — the city’s first and largest sustainable farmers market — and co-edited its cookbook, published in 2014.  “I’m the past board chair and still on the executive committee of Chicago’s Court Theatre,” she continued.  “It just won the Best Regional Theatre Tony award, which made me so happy.

“Now I spend a lot of time in New York City, and almost always work in a tour while there.  The Woolworth Building is a knockout.  So is Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where my guide, a cabaret singer by night, performed the greatest hits of Fred Ebb and Leonard Bernstein at the composers’ graves.  She was definitely a tough act to follow.  Next trips: Peru in January, then boating up the Amazon River.”

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