Muriel Dang Phillips completed her 86-year journey through this life on November 1st, 2024 after six years of living with pancreatic cancer. Born April 3, 1938 in Honolulu, Hawai'i, she remembered the bombing of Pearl Harbor and an early childhood in wartime Hawai’i. After graduating from Punahou School in 1956 she spent two years at Centenary Junior College for Women in New Jersey before completing her BA in Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she began her lifelong commitment to social action by participating in some of the very first lunch counter protests against segregation. Chapel Hill was also where she encountered sisters from the Order of St Helena, who awakened her deep love for the teachings and liturgy of the Episcopal Church.

After completing studies in theology and pastoral care at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley Muriel returned to Hawai’i and work in a parish and then as a teacher of religion at the Episcopal ‘Iolani School for boys. One Sunday in December of 1964 she met a sailor in church and on March 26th of 1967 they were married and off to San Francisco for one last year in the Navy and the arrival of their firstborn, Jennifer. Then to Cambridge Massachusetts for three more years of seminary and the birth of Cynthia in 1969. Susan arrived in 1972 in Pittsburg, California where newly ordained Jack was riding circuit on three small missions in the Sacramento/San Joaquin Delta.

Their time in the Bay Area was when Muriel came into her own as a social activist, as they protested the war and supported Cesar Chavez in the fields and picketing for the grape boycott. She also furthered the group skills she had studied with Virginia Satir in clinical training and took classes on moral development in Berkeley that involved skilled supervision of her teaching at the new St. Paul’s school in Oakland. By the time they left church ministry and moved to Los Alamitos in 1979, she was professionally prepared to answer her true calling.

Muriel took her preferred name "Phyllis" from Cloris Leachman's assertive character on the 1970's Mary Tyler Moore show and made it the hallmark of her style and attitude during her 25-year career leading life-survival groups for the "runaway and throwaway" teens who found their way to the Casa de Bienvenidos Youth Shelter in Los Alamitos, California. Following the teaching of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire, she empowered the wounded youths’ healing of themselves and one another with their own stories, often coming home to cry over the pain they shared.

In 2005 retirement brought Phyllis to Camarillo, but with no slackening of her pace, her spectrum of interests or her drive to help others. She was famous for her cooking all manners of cuisine, often duplicating the restaurant meal she found interesting. And she “adopted” neighbors living with the pain of disease and loss, providing food and phone support. She had endless love to share with all dogs, but especially her beloved German Shepherds, all of whom she hoped would greet her on the other side. She and Jack continued their political activism well into retirement and last but not least, they continued to play music. Starting in the 1980s, they played Old-time string band music with Phyllis clogging and playing banjo and guitar, for Civil War reenactments and contra dances. More recently they joined a Hawaiian kanikapila ‘ohana to play tunes, share food, and “talk story” about the Island ways of her childhood.

The passing of Muriel/ Phyllis Phillips leaves a wide swath of shared pain at the loss, and shared love and gratitude for a life truly well-lived.

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