Penelope Gould, one of “The Mitchell Girls” of Salem, dies at 99.
Penelope Mitchell (anglicized from Moutsopolis) was born on July 28th, 1920 in Grosse Pointe, MI. The eldest daughter of first-generation Greek parents, Polyxeni and Arthur Moutsopolis, she was gifted artistically, both as a singer and an abstract painter. Having studied voice at Boston’s Jordan Hall, she was a mezzo-soprano with the Greenwich Choral Society and an abstract expressionist painter, influenced by Minoru Kawabata, with whom she studied at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
She died of natural causes at her home in Old Greenwich, CT on June 16.
Five years of her youth were spent with her two sisters and paternal grandparents in the mountain village of Stemnitsa in the Peloponnese. Her grandfather, a goldsmith who made icons for the local Orthodox churches, was instrumental in sparking the deep faith that informed her life as a devout Greek Orthodox. An autodidact in the areas of religion, philosophy and the arts, Penelope was recognized for her beauty, elegance and restraint.
As teenagers, the Mitchell girls worked at their father’s candy store and open-air fruit market.
While working as a bridal consultant and wedding coordinator at Jay’s in Boston, she met her husband, James Pearson Gould, a civil engineering student at Harvard. They married in 1950 and moved to Old Greenwich in 1960.
Penelope is survived by her son, James Edward Gould, of Greenwich, her sister Alice Nahatis of Manchester-by-the-Sea, four grandchildren, Kara and Sebastian Peters, Pinkney and Thea Gould and two great-grandchildren, Lia and Cora Peters. She was predeceased by her daughter, Diane, in April and her sister, Christina Hanson.
A private service will be held in Manchester-by-the-Sea.
