Obituary for Phebe Ann Prescott Greenwood December 13, 1957 – November 2, 2025

Phebe Ann Prescott Greenwood was born from the Prescott family on December 13,

1957 in the city of New York. Her father Richmond Prescott and mother Anne Lee

Fitzhugh Worthington had determined Phebe would be their last child of their three little

ones. Ellen was the oldest, followed by Molly and then Phebe who although she was

born in New York, grew up along with everyone else in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Richmond (nicknamed Dick) Prescott was a lawyer while Anne was a stay-at-home

Mom. During the summers, Dick’s mother and father would take the girls to live at their

beach house in Padanaram Village and even see their cousins on occasion while there.

Once Dick thought less of his career as a lawyer, he studied to become a doctor and

cherished working at hospitals training nurses. His background with the military meant

that education was a priority to all of his children and even with a busy schedule he

would demand all of his children go to a private boarding school for middle school and

high school. Phebe and her siblings went to the Park School and later on Andover

(Class of 1974). Though Ann enjoyed life as a stay-at-home mother she transitioned to

work as a teacher by the time her children were boarding for education. Phebe’s most

fond memories of her childhood included the time she had with her siblings especially

outdoors and bike riding. To my surprise, my mother remembered feeling closer to our

grandparents growing up as a child during the summers on the beach she spent every

year of her life with them and even noting that she thought her mother and father might

get closer to her once she herself gave them grandchildren.

Phebe attended Stanford University which is where she met Douglas Greenwood, her

future husband. She majored in International Relations and continued her graduate

school program with Harvard University in Public Policy (Class of 1986). While dating

Douglas in college, she even took an entire year to live in Paris, France with Isabelle

Gouye to master French. After this permanent friendship with the Gouye family was

built, she then worked with the Peace Corps in Togo.

While living in Togo, Africa, she became quickly aware of it’s corruption and dangers.

The local rivers were never to be swam in for the alligators were always agile. Her main

endeavors were in serving the USAID water project that provided clean water to local

villagers. Her project never paid bribes, upholding a strict faith-based anti-corruption

standard maintained throughout her career.

Phebe married Douglas Greenwood on August 10, 1985 and soon had 4 children

together: Phebe, Lisa, Douglas, and Hannah. In one of her most exciting romantic trips

with my father, her favorite pregnancy memories consisted of when she took a visit to

Isabelle Gouye’s wedding. She was shocked by how much royal treatment she was

given upon arrival. There were cab drivers who gave her transportation for free, every

day citizens who gave her their parking spaces and empty grocery carts, and even

waiters who paid for her dining meals all because she was “bearing a child.” Recounting

this comedy my mother filled her friends with when she spoke about American culture

versus European culture especially towards pregnant women had everyone dying

laughing. Phebe was always known for being very funny.

Phebe senior and Douglas senior were first time homebuyers in Santa Clara, California.

As newlyweds, one of the biggest advantages to living in such an enormous state was

the close family nearby. My mother’s siblings had cousins for her four children to play

with all of which were of similar ages. My father, the youngest of eight siblings had

plenty of playdates with cousins for the kids to do pretend play with too. For my mom,

her sister Molly had two children 20 minutes away who enjoyed both surprise and

planned visits. It was between 1986 and 1992 that Phebe finalized her number of

children to four and made the decision to hire an au pair. There were many au pairs to

enter the Greenwood household. When one of the au pairs would leave, a new one

would be found to replace them and so our family got the privilege of knowing Petra,

Goolia, Andrea, and a few other replacements in Santa Clara. Goolia in particular was

an au pair for the longest time with our family and in fact the friendship formed with our

family has literally lasted a lifetime seeing as how she is still in touch with us to this day.

In 1993, there was a job opportunity that re-arranged the roles of the household. My

mother was to become a full time stay-at-home mother while my father took a promising

salary in Richmond, Virginia.

In response to her new position of a stay-at-home Mom, Phebe enrolled in the PTA at

the local elementary school her children were attending. It didn’t take long for my

mother to build a new library at Maybeury Elementary School with a video that included

me, her daughter Hannah, demonstrating how old and drafty the original library was.

Her community presence was very strong and everywhere we went as children

someone knew Phebe and her impact on our town. She signed every one of her

children up for extra curricular activities that seemed to never end. Basketball, soccer,

swimming, batmitton, cro kay, and tennis were just the beginning. Phebe had 18 years

of piano under her belt from her childhood and there was a mandatory declaration that

each and every one of us to do at least one year of piano. Every one of us were

supposed to know how to sight read music and join an orchestra. Our mother also

hosted big Christmas caroling parties every year to the point where there was even a

real estate agent who tried advertising the houses for sale in our cul de sac by

mentioning that there were Christmas carolers from the Greenwood household that

would spread the Christmas cheer every year. My mother was well-known, well-liked,

and always held in high regard especially in our small town.

It was also no surprise that my mother had everyone in the household on a short leash

and would instill in us a straight-laced lifestyle. She baptized and christened every one

of her children. She had every one of her children participate in confirmation classes on

Christianity and get “confirmed” as teenagers. To the naked eye, I’m certain someone

would have thought we were a military family. There was a strict no alcohol or drug use

policy in our household. She had actually trained all of her children to be public images

of sobriety and clean lifestyles. My mother recognized which friendships might be bad

influences for her children and only pursued the ones for her kids that she thought were

going to give positive and promising influences on her household.

After 13 years of marriage, my mother and father made the decision to separate. At this

time, my father was still living in the house with my mother but just using a different

bedroom for his living quarters. In even the best divorces, that type of living

arrangement can strain a family and so since the divorce was not highly structured, it

took a toll on the children. After two years of my father weighing job opportunities and

locations, he cemented a career in engineering with a lucrative income in Washington

D.C. My mother had the next 8 years of her life as a single mother. She had tough

decisions to make. Now that her house was under her responsibility should she try to

keep it and balance being a stay-at-home mother? Did her children who were

approaching pre-teen and teenage years need her at home 24/7? Though it would be

time-consuming to work a 9-5 job she did exactly that. Her masters in Public Policy from

Harvard brought her to Virginia Department of Transportation where she worked for

over a decade. In the first five years of work she was awarded several performance

trophies for her outstanding project management skills.

Despite taking pride in her eldest children at this time taking care of her youngest

children, there were moments where she had some personal struggles. She started

feeling less connected to her children. By the time we were all teenagers or older, it was

surprising for her to discover just how drastically different in personalities all four of her

children were. It was with this room for introspection that Phebe said that though the

divorce to Douglas had seemed like the best solution for her, she realized it was not

altogether necessary. She had also said that fathers are a necessary part of life and

even if you can phone call, text, and sleepover at a father’s house, there is no recipe for

a mother to give the needs to children that fathers give.

Once I, her youngest daughter Hannah, was 17 and chose to live with her father there

was growth as a family. Little did anyone predict that by the time all of her children were

in their twenties, most of them would in fact move back in with their father. Once I,

Hannah, was at the verge of 20, Phebe would go through an unexpected medical

emergency. Her colon ruptured while at work. This condition kills in under 4 hours

without proper care but for Phebe she was not given life saving attention until 12 hours

time. As Phebe was fighting from a hospital bed with weeks of recovery and enduring a

colostomy bag for an unseen future, there was a loneliness to her. She asked her ex-

husband who had every means to reject her, if she could live with him so her mind

would be less alone and the means of waking up to her children was simpler. To her

surprise, he said “Yes, of course. You are their mother”. After 2 years of living together,

the divorced Phebe had become content with a man who loved a working woman and a

woman who loved a patient father. At this time, it was as if the two of them together had

started to not just complement one another but actually empower or heal the children

who bore witness to them becoming one.

Of the four children, the eldest was married living in California. Lisa and little Douglas

were enrolled in undergrad and graduate school programs. I, Hannah, was graduating

from an undergraduate program, engaged to my fiancé, and pregnant with my first child.

Trying to set this best example for her children once more, Phebe A knew her mother

was ill and senile and needed full time care. She invited Anne to live with her to the end

of her days and took care of her the way a nurse would. She even purchased her

mother Anne’s house and allowed Phebe B to rent it out as a newlywed arrangement.

Phebe A got the best leadership role she could establish at WMATA in District of

Columbia with a lucrative income she cherished the workforce. As fate would have it,

this was when my mother’s work recognition, performance, and prestige all peaked. She

was working her dream job with the paycheck that she had always wanted but what

spoke the most to her was the changes she started making in her personal life too. If

she had unresolved baggage from her childhood as a sibling or as a daughter she was starting to

forgive it and even re-connect with those siblings and parents and build memories with

new faces on it. Her introspective, her convictions, and her strength as a person actually

inspired the very family members that had been sources of past negativity to literally

make positive introspective changes of their own.

The only grandchild in her life was living with their married mother and father in an

apartment 20 minutes away from her. It was an adventure seeing her next generation

from afar but when COVID hit in 2020, and she saw a struggle in her daughter’s job

maintenance at this time, she offered for this family to live with her rent free in 2021.

Little did my mother know that this offer meant she would finally get more than one

grandchild.

Phebe retired by the age of 64 to take care of her mother Anne full time and to help me,

Hannah, with my pregnant, postpartum and lactation life in 2022 and 2024. Often times

Phebe preferred showing a reserved expression of her emotions to her children. If she

wanted to show love to someone it would come out in pints because she was not

capable of releasing “gallons” of love from her body. It reminds many of this concept of

being unable to wear your heart on your sleeve. Shockingly, with her grandchildren,

Phebe was determined to not just show gallons of love to them but at times it made her

own children question if Phebe had ever really been a “reserved” or “pint-bound” love

expresser. Phebe taught my father who had fallen madly in love with her by this time

how important it was to be generous and participate in every aspect of family bonding. If

my father needed someone to remind him how to be open-minded my mother was the

one to do it. If Phebe wanted to take the grandchildren on an adventure, she could

teach my father what tasks best fit his personality and vice versa. There is a saying that

grandchildren can be a person’s weakness and quite frankly, my mother and father

displayed such love while being grandparents that this was definitely in fact the case.

Their love and bond had become in fact so full circle that if there were still unresolved

issues as a family left from a disrupting divorce between the two of them, those issues

were starting to look like fate had reconnected the two of them into a reminder of what

made their connection so special when they first met.

It was on a mission trip to Uganda in 2024 in which Phebe and Douglas went with

church members to educate at the Uganda Christian University, when Phebe had one

last near death experience. She collapsed on the ground while there and used her

strength to trek the 14 hours to the nearest hospital. After battling what her body knew

was something sinister, she felt hydrated enough from IV fluids to attempt flying home

to District of Columbia. Phebe endured nearly 4 flights from Uganda to Rome or Greece

or Paris in order to land in Dulles Airport. What gave her the most strength was the

voice of what she believed was God whispering to her on the flight that she would

survive and land home. Once arriving, the surgeons discovered that indeed Phebe had

a ruptured bowel which had clearly been severed for more than 5 days. They patched

her up with a colostomy bag once more and during her Christmas break it was revealed

she had colorectal cancer.

Did this somber realization stop my mother? Did she wallow and try giving up on herself

or her future? Phebe asked for the data on her life expectancy and despite knowing she

had 3 months to live with or without treatments she rose to the occasion. Phebe was

given a powerful speech from Anne, her mother, to continue fighting her condition and

everyone around her rallied to strengthen her with a fighting immune system. During

this time, she hired a caregiver for her mother and sought vitamins, minerals,

supplements, herbs, dietary changes, and homeopathy to empower her killer T cells. In

her last year of life, her grace was entirely focused on quality time with grandchildren

and children all of whom still lived with her. In July Phebe was put on hospice care with

a mere 2-5 week life expectancy. She could have once more chosen to sell her assets

and distribute them to her four children accordingly. Instead she did the most powerful

and unimaginable thing, she gave all of her properties and money to her ex husband

and father of her children. She believed that he, the property owner of her heritage,

heart, and future would know how to invest and build the rest of a beautiful portrait that

he and she had started to create together. She got re-married to my father on August

11, 2025 on the front porch, 40 years exactly from the day of their first marriage. When

she passed away on November 2 nd , 2025 it was in my father’s arms with love and

compassion.

There is a poem on maternal love by Delores Almond that resonates with me best on

how to describe Phebe especially in her last few years of beauty.

The Cosmos Mom

My mother has left the building, yes it was time for her to fly

Her body had become tired and worn, yet her spirt still wanted to fly

No longer willing to be a prisoner in a body that refused to take

commands

This was her body still, and it was becoming hard to understand

She got tried of fussing and fighting with it, and decided to let go

She now dances and with the wind as her partner and starlight lines her

soul

Thunderbolts underneath her feet that cast a beautiful glow

She somersaults on moonbeams and rides on rainbows

The body that refused to listen is able now to fly

She left that old tired worn out body to take refuge in the skies

Maybe you caught a glimpse of her, she moves quickly now you see

As she sails on the sunlight and breathes moonbeams

She travels through space and time, who knew one day she would fly?

As she peeks though different dimensions, this is déjà, no lie

She wears moonlight in her hair and kicks stardust with her feet

She somersaults on the clouds and plants sunflowers for us to see

She speaks different languages which is all hieroglyphics to me

And when you witness the eclipse of the sun and moon

It merely my mother winking at me

My mom is now a Cosmos Mom, free to travel as she pleases

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