KENT — Virginia Conboy was born on Jan. 1, 1913, in Yonkers, N.Y. On Jan. 1, 2013, she celebrated her 100th birthday at a party held in her honor at the Kent Senior Center. Conboy has been a Kent resident for about 50 years. She moved to Litchfield County with her husband, Irving (who died in 1998, in his 90s).A private party was also held on New Year’s Eve for Conboy and a family party was planned.Conboy is matriarch of a large family. She has three children, eight grandchildren, 10 great grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren. First Selectman Bruce Adams and state Sen. Clark Chapin (R-30) both spoke about Conboy at the community party and extended birthday wishes on behalf of their respective constituencies.Chapin presented Conboy with a souvenir postcard used in his first political campaign to become a state representative in 2000. The card features an 88-year-old Conboy, posing for the picture with the candidate.Chapin also presented the honoree with a framed citation from the Connecticut General Assembly in honor of her birthday.Conboy’s granddaughter, Cornwall resident Alicia North, said, “My grandmother drove her car until she was 95 years old. In fact, the family had a good laugh recently, when she received a drivers license renewal application in the mail. “She is not,” she added, “renewing her license.” North said Conboy has been married twice. Her son Richard Pedersen lives in Buffalo, N.Y.; her son Jeffrey Conboy lives in Goshen; and her daughter, Dianne Conboy, resides in Arizona.“My grandmother has always been an active person, volunteering on many committees and organizations,” North said. “She was on the Kent Republican Town Committee. She was active in the Kent branch of the Sharon Hospital Auxiliary, the Kent Chamber of Commerce and the Kent Nursing Association. She volunteered with several groups in New Milford.” She also volunteered at the Kent Center School cafeteria and was a member of the Kent Singers.When Conboy and her husband moved to Kent 50 years ago, they purchased Saddle Ridge Farm and lived in the original farmhouse until 1980. The Conboys sold their land to a developer who subdivided the land on the hill into home sites.According to Kent real estate broker David Bain, the land on Route 7, in front of the Saddle Ridge home subdivision on a hill, is still called Conboy Flats.Conboy now lives in a senior apartment at Templeton Farms, Kent’s senior housing project. She was on the first board of trustees of Templeton Farms, when it was planned and built.North said her grandmother also worked as a real estate agent in Kent. “She sold Dolph and Audrey Traymon the building where the Fife ’n Drum restaurant is; it has been owned and operated by the Traymons for decades.”North presented her grandmother a birthday cake with three number candles on top: a one and two zeroes.
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Greg Fricke and James Boehmer, co-owners of Peggy Mercury in Kent, recently launched their first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts.”
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Fricke and Boehmer are not there to stock their shelves with the same products customers find at standard makeup retailers. They’re there to help customers find what works for them. That usually means asking customers about themselves and learning about their beauty habits, skin, style and the way they like to present themselves. Fricke and Boehmer believe it’s their job to help customers bring out the qualities that suit them and determine what works best for their look.
So much of the Peggy Mercury world is about emboldening people to become more creative, and possibly bolder, versions of themselves. Some of this comes through the store’s creative collaborations with artists, designers and stylists.
It’s part of an ethos that encourages them and their friends to use the shop as a kind of laboratory, trying out new creative experiments without knowing how they might turn out. Whether in fashion, painting, fiber arts or photography, the projects almost always turn out marvelously.
A line of sterling silver charms they sell started as a small project by their friend Nolan Percival. In the beginning, the pieces were for close friends and loved ones. But Boehmer and Fricke encouraged Percival to get a little more serious about the project and create a whole line for the store. Today, it’s one of their top-selling collections.
Classic styles, bold colors, and creative concerts make up the “Imaginary Concerts” line at Peggy Mercury.Provided
“Imaginary Concerts” has the duo taking their own advice.
The project started as a way for Boehmer to connect with his mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Taking old concert shirts from his own collection, Boehmer and his mother began cutting out the graphics with the idea that they would make a quilt together. Unfortunately, she died before they could complete the project in 2025. The pieces, which were ready for production, were put on the back burner as Boehmer and Fricke dealt with their loss and the whirlwind of projects that never seemed to cease at Peggy Mercury.
But the harsh winter of 2026 presented an opportunity to take some time and focus on themselves. Part of that meant revisiting and redefining the concert T-shirt project. This time, instead of looking to the warmth and comfort of a quilt, they turned to another passion — fashion.
Taking a page from their own book, they wanted to create something that felt comfortable to them. They took two disparate loves — one rooted in simple preppy style, with clean lines and classic silhouettes, and the other in the nitty gritty worlds of punk rock and pop — and blended them together to create something entirely new. Pulling from the staples of vintage Brooks Brothers and Charvet collections, they applied the graphic elements with bold stitching reminiscent of punk jackets of the ‘70s and ‘80s, but with a much more sophisticated air.
But the remixing isn’t just the pairing of prep and punk. The pieces are not canon. They take liberties with the realities of concert tours, combining one band’s dates with another band’s logos, mixing them all up until the reality is lost and imagination is the only truth.
Shirts from Peggy Mercury’s first fashion line, “Imaginary Concerts,” hang on display.Provided
Adding to the mix is an element of perpetual creativity. Art can be messy, both figuratively and literally, and many of Fricke and Boehmer’s artist friends carry evidence of their work on them at all times. As a nod to these tireless creatives, the duo added haphazard splashes of bright color, giving the line an even more distinctive feel.
For them, “Imaginary Concerts” passes the “Peggy Test.” The mythical Peggy Mercury is a fictional figurehead for the company, a character who thrives on creativity and change. The name, much like the clothing line, is a mixture of interests: Mercury is a planet, a deity and an elusive, transformative element, while Peggy is the wonderfully stylish and boundary-pushing Peggy Guggenheim.
Everything Fricke and Boehmer put in their store has to pass this test: Would Peggy Mercury approve? For their first collection, the answer is a resounding yes.
Peggy Mercury is at 9 Maple St., Unit 2, Kent.
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