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More information has been released regarding last weekend’s death of Virginia Moore, who many Kentuckians grew to know when she served as the American Sign Language interpreter for Gov. Andy Beshear’s daily COVID-19 briefings.

She passed away on Saturday after an extended stay in the hospital for heart surgery and complications with her lungs and kidneys.  She temporarily left her post on the updates early in the fall of 2020 when it was announced that she was battling cancer, but she returned to the updates after about a month.

Virginia was born in Louisville on Feb. 16, 1962, and was raised in Jeffersonville, Indiana. She was born to the late Embry Richard Moore and Anna Virginia (Dillion) Moore.

She holds the highest level of interpreter certification from the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), as well as the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) National Interpreter Certification.  It was her service as Governor Beshear’s interpreter during the pandemic which heightened her popularity with the public locally, nationally, and internationally.

She served the deaf and hard of hearing community since 1995 at the Kentucky Commission on the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Frankfort and held many roles during her 28-year tenure, rising to the post of executive director.

While heading the agency, Virginia was instrumental in getting legislation passed to improve the lives of the 750,000 deaf, deaf-blind, hard of hearing, and speech-impaired citizens of the state by providing specialized telecommunications equipment and expanding programs, such as the Access Center, to coordinate interpreter and CART services for all state agencies.

A Celebration of Life service will be Sunday, June 11, from 1-5 p.m. in View Pointe Hall on the top level of the Muhammad Ali Center, located at 144 North Sixth Street in Louisville.