’40 NH Women Trailblazers’ features University of New Hampshire’s first Black female graduate

Elizabeth Ann Virgil, who a century ago was the first Black woman to graduate from the University of New Hampshire, is one of 40 women featured in an exhibit opening March 6 at the Portsmouth Athenaeum.

“We wanted to highlight courageous New Hampshire women who have improved our lives, and for girls and women to see these role models who have broken barriers,” Mary-Jo Monusky said.

She is curating “NH Women Trailblazers” with Mara Witzling, Ellen Fineberg and Susan Roman in the Athenaeum’s Randall Gallery.

Categories include aeronautics, arts and culture, athletics, business, civil rights, education, the environment, government, and voting rights.

Virgil, a 1922 graduate of Portsmouth High School, graduated from UNH with a degree in home economics in 1926.

“After graduation she was unable to find a teaching position as a Black woman in the North,” according to UNH Dimond Library’s website. “She traveled to the South and taught at the Normal School in Bowie, Maryland.”

Virgil also taught at schools in North Carolina, Florida and Virginia.

She returned to Portsmouth in 1951 to care for her ailing mother, Alberta.

In New Hampshire, she took several secretarial jobs before working for UNH’s Soil Conservation Service, retiring in 1973. Shortly before her death in 1991, a life-size portrait of her was commissioned that now hangs in the Dimond Library.

State Street Discount founder

Another trailblazer is Irene “Renee” Levy (1932-2025), whose family owns State Street Discount.

Levy (1932-2025) came from a Boston family with deep roots in retail — her dad had a food business in Haymarket Square. She and her husband, Bob, established State Street Discount in Portsmouth as a small gift store in 1955. Among their wares were small appliances and electronics, including radios, toasters, and coffee makers.

The store was beloved by locals. Levy was known for her unlimited energy as well as her red nails, bright lipstick, and high heels.

Her family recalls that she could remember names and details with uncanny precision.

“From the early days of driving to Boston to pick up inventory, to helping her son Gary expand the business into a sprawling Lafayette Road location, she never stopped working … to generations of customers, she was the store,” her obituary said.

“Renee consistently rose to the challenge of growing a successful business while being a wife and mother, and this in a time when few women ran businesses at all. She was truly a pioneer,” her family wrote of her.

“She had a natural ability to make people feel cared for, and she believed that no customer request was too small. Whether it was a 50-cent appliance part or a full kitchen package, she would put the same effort into satisfying the customer.”

Levy also supported the New Hampshire Art Association, of which her husband was a longtime member. The Robert Lincoln Levy Gallery, named in honor of him, has been the headquarters of NHAA since 1990. It is located in State Street Discount’s original location in downtown Portsmouth.

Olympics silver medalist skier

Women across the state are included in the exhibit, including Olympian Penny Pitou of Gilford. As a member of the U.S. ski team in 1960, she won two silver medals at Squaw Valley, California, in the downhill and giant slalom events.

As a freshman at Laconia High School in 1953, she had ignored a no-girls rule and tried out for the boys’ ski team.

She hid her hair under a hat and asked friends to call her Tommy. She made the team. But during a downhill race at New Hampton School, her hat flew off and her hair came down. She was asked to leave the team, but did not give up her dream of a career in skiing.

The U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame, of which she was named a member in 1976, describes her as one of the greatest female skiers the United States has ever produced.

Pitou went on to found ski schools (one at Gunstock Ski Area) and, in 1974, opened Penny Pitou Travel, personally conducting ski and hiking tours to Europe — a practice she continued until 2023.

In an interview that same year with The Laconia Daily Sun, she said of her trailblazing life: “There was a lot of wasted talent with women staying home. Men didn’t want women working. It was an embarrassment for husbands to have people see their wives working. It made people think the family needed the money.”

The free exhibit is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 1 to 4 p.m., at 9 Market Square through June 20.

The Portsmouth Athenaeum, 9 Market Square, is a nonprofit membership library founded in 1817. Its Shaw Research Library and Randall Gallery are open to the public Tuesdays through Saturdays, 1-4 p.m. For more information, go to portsmouthathenaeum.org or call 603-431-2538.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald. Reporting by Sherry Wood.