In Memoriam

Edith Holt McEvoy '34 She felt free to be her own person By Anne Downey '95G

Edith Holt McEvoy '34 was the first woman to graduate in architecture from UNH, and at the time, she was the only woman in the College of Technology. She was an independent, intrepid person who didn't recognize limits and embraced the future—she started a blog called edithat97andcounting.blogspot.com last year, writing about growing up in Nashua. After suffering two small strokes she died on Sept. 10 at the age of 97.

McEvoy was born in Nashua, the youngest of three; her siblings were Ruth Holt Appleton '30 and Ralph Holt '30. Her father was a builder and her mother a homemaker who lobbied for women's suffrage.

Two inches short of 6 feet, McEvoy was tall, dark and striking in an era that celebrated small, cute and blonde. As a result, she felt free to be her own person. Her father built her a special jungle gym when she was 11 to help her stop slouching, and she skied, hiked, rode horses and played field hockey. Her brother, Ralph, taught her to drive when she was 14, and she in turn taught her nearly-blind neighbor.

McEvoy excelled in math and physics. In her architecture classes, she built and maneuvered 12-foot trusses by herself and good-naturedly took on the task of going for ice cream at the Dairy Bar. Because it was part of the program, she signed up for ROTC—it never occurred to her that she couldn't participate.

McEvoy met her husband, Weston '38, at UNH—he was a popular forestry major. They married in 1939 and raised three daughters. After graduation, McEvoy worked for the Historic American Buildings Survey, part of the WPA. She walked, hitchhiked or took the train to old houses in southern New Hampshire, where she took measurements and created drawings which now reside in the Library of Congress. In 1936, she documented the Col. Paul Wentworth House in Rollinsford as it was taken apart, beam by beam, to be reassembled in Dover, Mass. When the owners donated it back to the town in 2002, McEvoy, the only surviving member of the project, was interviewed by National Public Radio.

McEvoy became a reference librarian at the Nashua Public Library in 1959; she retired in 1986. She was good at her job because she was precise, enjoyed research and loved to help people find information.

Her daughters say she was ahead of her time as a parent in that she could balance disapproval of bad behavior with unconditional love. She had a wonderful sense of humor and an infectious laugh. "She once said that she raised 'free-range kids,'" her daughter Jean Holt says. "She let us make our own mistakes." Her daughter Mary McEvoy-Barrett once skipped school and went to Boston with some friends; after getting picked up by the police, she called her parents to retrieve her. "All she said to me was, 'Have they fed you? Do you want to go out for a bite to eat?'" McEvoy-Barrett remembers. "But the note she sent in to the principal the next day read, 'Mary was absent without my knowledge, or consent.'"

Return to In Memoriam