University of Maryland Professor Emerita Dr. Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, who died at the age of 98 on Feb. 10, was remembered on Sept. 28 in a celebration of life service that recognized the pivotal role she played in developing feminism at UMD. Photo by Michelle Siegel.
By Michelle Siegel
Several dozen people gathered at the University of Maryland’s Memorial Chapel on Sept. 28 in remembrance of the late Dr. Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, professor emerita and the first coordinator of women’s studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Virginia died at the age of 98 on Feb. 10. This service was not about mourning her loss, but rather, recognizing her contributions to the community and celebrating her life.
Edith Beauchamp, Virginia’s daughter, spoke about Virginia’s life and how the trials she endured influenced her feminist values.
Virginia was born on a dairy farm in Michigan on June 28, 1920, less than two months before the country ratified the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution — the amendment granting women the right to vote.
As a young adult, Virginia earned a Bachelor of Arts and numerous honors at the University of Michigan, taught in public schools and enlisted in the Red Cross. After serving abroad between 1945 and 1947, she returned to the University of Michigan to earn a Master of Arts with top honors in English, began teaching once more and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s prestigious English program in 1955.
Virginia met her husband, George Beauchamp Jr., during her time at the University of Chicago. The two owned a house in Greenbelt and had three children: Edith, George and John.
Shortly after the Beauchamp family moved into their Greenbelt home, Virginia began serving at the Greenbelt News Review.
“Virginia held every editorial position on the staff. She copyedited others’ work to be cleaner and more correct, she recorded city council meetings and the Greenbelt Museum lectures, she wrote editorials and participated in the decisions on whether to publish a letter to the editor. For most years, Virginia was also a member of the editorial board and the board of directors,” said Greenbelt News Review editor emerita Mary Lou Williamson, who was originally recruited for the paper by Virginia in 1962. “Virginia … and others were the team dedicated to maintaining the high standards of the News Review over the decades.”
When Virginia’s husband was deployed to deal with the Berlin Crisis, his earnings decreased, leaving her struggling to provide for their children.
“That’s when mom, in desperation for a way to pay her mortgage, showed up at the University of Maryland,” Edith said.
Virginia, who then stood at the top of her Ph.D. class and had two decades of teaching experience (including some at the college level), convinced the University of Maryland, College Park to take her on as an instructor in 1961.
George Beauchamp Jr. eventually reunited with his loved ones, and in 1963, the Beauchamp family moved to Lagos, Nigeria, where Virginia helped found the American International School of Lagos.
To avoid the civil war that appeared to be brewing in Nigeria, Virginia and company returned to Greenbelt in 1965. Only a few months after they closed on a house, however, Beauchamp’s husband announced he was being deployed to Vietnam.
Virginia “had no say in the military decision once again — and once again, the pressure of paying for a mortgage and supporting three kids as a single mom was on her,” Edith said. “My mother was unflappable. She was always calm and even-tempered — but those three years took an incredible toll on her emotionally, and the three of us [children] as well.”
Out of economic necessity, Virginia returned to the University of Maryland.
This time, in part due to the work she’d done in Nigeria, the English department reluctantly granted her the title “Assistant Professor” and put her on a tenure track. However, she still faced with inequality.
“They kept arguing that she didn’t need the comparable pay to her male colleagues, because she had a husband,” Edith said. “She would fume at home about this, because she was married in name only with him halfway around the world — so even at my age, the inequity and economic unfairness that she felt was not lost on me.”
It was at the University of Maryland that Virginia came to know Dr. William Kirwan, who also spoke about Virginia at the service. Now chancellor emeritus of the University System of Maryland, Kirwan — originally of the mathematics department — served as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs starting in 1981, as president of the University of Maryland from 1989 to 1998 and as chancellor of the University System of Maryland from 2002 to 2015.
“Virginia dedicated her life to giving a voice to the accomplishments of women and to the challenges they have faced in a male-dominated world,” Kirwan said. “This is reflected in her scholarship, where she’s pored through documents and other source materials of women living in the 19th and early 20th centuries, to document the travails of their daily lives — which, sadly, she found, were too often peppered by abusive men.”
“But without a doubt,” Kirwan continued, “her greatest contribution to the university was her career-long efforts to transform the culture of the university and make it an institution that is supportive of women.”
When Virginia began teaching at the University of Maryland, women still received unequal pay, and it was difficult and uncommon for women to advance their careers to full professorship or tenure as did their male colleagues. The inequity inspired Virginia to establish a meeting at which faculty from across the University of Maryland could share their grievances.
When Dr. Charles Bishop, the chancellor of the University of Maryland from 1970 to 1974, heard about this meeting, he established the Commission on Women’s Affairs and appointed Virginia as its chair. The Commission on Women’s Affairs took up issues such as the salary gap, campus safety for women and support for women in science and engineering, among other women’s issues.
A few years later, Virginia spearheaded a women’s studies program at the University of Maryland.
“One of the first such programs is now a distinguished academic department, and one of the nation’s top women’s studies programs,” Kirwan said.
Kirwan met Virginia when he became the provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs in 1981.
During the service, he spoke with admiration on how Virginia changed the institution not through hot-headed demands, but rather “through the power of her intellect, her unflappable ability to speak truth to power, her persistence and, ultimately, her ability to get others to see the righteousness of her cause.”
When Kirwan became the president of the University of Maryland, he appointed Virginia to be the president’s special assistant on women’s affairs. Together, they studied and allocated funds for pay equity, recruited more senior women faculty and administrators and began arrangements to provide child-care support for working mothers and families.
“Virginia still growing and pioneering efforts to build a more supportive culture for women at the university resulted in almost universal admiration and adulation,” Kirwan said.
Virginia retired from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1990. Later in life, she participated in the Greenbelt Nursery School, established women’s groups and senior housing in Greenbelt and helped Edith, a single mother, raise her two adopted children. She also continued to work for the Greenbelt News Review and published her last book at the age of 85.
“Today, we see women [at the University of Maryland] in many major leadership roles — the provost, two vice presidents, deans, chairman of the campus center, distinguished university professors,” Kirwan said. “As much as any other person that I know, Virginia was responsible for launching the changes in institutional culture that has made the university a more equitable place for women.”