Nancy Jean Coutu ’93 never had a chance to tell her stories about the Peace Corps—about the friendly people she met in Madagascar, about the vegetables she planted and the school she helped build. On April 9, 1996, Coutu was murdered as she was riding her bike near the village of Baraketa where she was living. Her death, described as a random robbery attempt, was a shock to her friends at home and also to the villagers, whose “faces were wet with tears,” according to a fellow volunteer in a letter to Coutu’s family.

The government of Madagascar posthumously awarded Coutu a knighthood for her work, the first woman or foreigner to receive this honor. And her mother, Connie Coutu, assembled her daughter’s letters and journal entries into a book, inculding this excerpt from the day the school project was finished: “The villagers will call the school Souvenirs de Nancy. It’s nice to know a mark of my beauty will be left here.”

At UNH, family and friends established the Nancy J. Coutu Wildlife Scholarship for students majoring in wildlife who exemplify Coutu’s spirit of outreach and her commitment to service.