Margaret Elizabeth Pfohl Campbell

Margaret Elizabeth Pfohl Campbell
(December 4, 1902 - January 9, 2004)

Margaret Elizabeth Pfohl was born December 4, 1902, in Clemmons, North Carolina. She received a Bachelor's degree in English from Salem College and a Master's degree in education from Columbia University.  At the tender age of 25, she was named Dean of Moravian College for Women in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.  In 1929, she became Dean of Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia.  Seven years later in June 1936, she wed Edmund D. Campbell. They settled in Arlington and raised four children.

Concerned about public education issues in Arlington, Elizabeth Campbell won a seat in 1947 to the county's first elected school board.  She was the first woman elected to a school board in Virginia.  Her leadership and commitment led to funding for seven new Arlington schools and the hiring of more teachers at better salaries.  Under Elizabeth’s leadership, kindergarten programs and full-day sessions for first- and second-graders were instituted, as well as educational services for the handicapped and the first countywide school bus service.  Elizabeth and her husband Ed (a leading civil rights attorney – but more about that in his upcoming bio) were also instrumental in the struggle to desegregate Virginia's public schools in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  

In 1957, Elizabeth Campbell became president of the Greater Washington Educational Television Association (GWETA), formed to create a nonprofit educational broadcast service for the Washington metropolitan area.  In 1961, a public television station began broadcasting in the nation's capital as WETA Channel 26. Under her pioneering leadership, WETA flourished, growing from a small local public television station into a multimedia company of national renown. Elizabeth Campbell stepped down from her role as president in 1971 to become WETA's vice president of community affairs, a position she held until her death at the age of 101 in 2004.

Elizabeth Campbell received many awards recognizing her decades of public service, including Washingtonian of the Year in 1978 and public television's highest honor, the Ralph Lowell Award, from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1996.  She also received five honorary doctorate degrees.  In 2017, Glencarlyn Elementary School was renamed Campbell Elementary School in her honor.  And in the Shirlington neighborhood, Campbell Avenue is named in honor of Edmund D. and Elizabeth P. Campbell.

And in the midst of all of her vital public service in the early 1960s, Elizabeth founded a new parish with her husband and a few dozen other Episcopalians in north Arlington:  St. Peter’s Episcopal Church.