Elizabeth Campbell (television)

Margaret Elizabeth Pfohl Campbell (December 4, 1902 – January 9, 2004) was an American public television executive. Campbell also served as a teacher, college administrator, as a notable board member for the Arlington Public Schools, and as the founder of WETA-TV, the first public television station in Washington, D.C.

Elizabeth Pfohl was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina to a Moravian minister and a music teacher. She had a sister, Ruth, who survived her. Pfohl received her high school education at Salem Academy where she graduated in 1919. She then attended Salem College, a related institution, and received a bachelor's degree in education in 1923. She later received her master's degree in Education from Columbia University.

Pfohl married trial lawyer and widower Edmund D. Campbell in 1936, and moved with him to Arlington, Virginia, where she helped raise his two children, and they would have three sons together. Rev. Edmund D. Campbell, Jr. predeceased his long-lived mother, but the twins H. Donald Campbell and Rev. Benjamin P. Campbell and their sister Virginia Campbell Holt survived her, as well did nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Pfohl returned to her high school to begin her education career, teaching girls at Salem Academy and after two years, she began teaching college level courses. She then transitioned into education administration, serving as dean of Moravian College for Women in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania for two years (although she was just 25 when appointed). Beginning in 1929, and during the Great Depression until 1936, Pfohl served as dean at Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, Virginia.

In Arlington, as she raised her family, Campbell realized that Virginia's public schools had very real problems, in part due to underfunding, as well as policies of racial segregation added to the state constitution early in the century.

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