Virginia Walcott Beauchamp, 98, a longtime resident of Greenbelt, died on Sunday, February 10, 2019. An English professor at the University of Maryland, she began advocating for a Women’s Studies Program at the university in 1968 and was the first coordinator of the new program when approved in the mid-1970s. Dr. Beauchamp continued as a significant leader for women’s issues at the university, chairing the Women’s Commission and serving on the Faculty Senate. For more than 50 years she was also a key player for this newspaper.
Born Virginia Walcott in Sparta, Mich., she attended the University of Michigan for her B.A. and M.A. and then served in the Red Cross at the end of World War II. She later donated her Red Cross uniform to the Greenbelt Museum. After departing on a troop ship from San Francisco on September 10, 1945, bound for the Philippines, she spent a year in post-war Japan returning to the U.S. on May 9, 1947. She met her husband, George E. Beauchamp, Jr., while both were in graduate school at the University of Chicago where she received her Ph.D. in English in 1955. The couple had three children: Edith, George and John.
The Beauchamp family moved to the 8 Court of Crescent Road in 1957. From 1963 to 1965 the family lived in Lagos, Nigeria, where she helped found the American International School of Lagos in 1964, serving on their first school board, which she recently described as one of her proudest achievements. When the family returned, they moved into a new home on Maplewood Court. Beauchamp again taught at the university and volunteered on the newspaper. A few months after moving in, her husband was sent to Saigon for several years by the State Department during the Vietnam War, while she and the children stayed in Greenbelt. When there was time, she enjoyed playing bridge at the Community Center and attended cultural events. She took great pride in her children and, much later, her grandchildren.
For more of this story see the February 21 News Review.
