None Marion Phillips

Marion Grumman Phillips, 91, died on Tuesday May 14, 2013. She was a painter, a poet, an aviator, a genealogist, an author, and a talented mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother.  She and her husband, Ellis L. Phillips, Jr., met at flying school on Long Island in 1940. They commuted between Princeton University and Mount Holyoke College via a jointly owned small plane, the “Philgrum.” When World War II broke out, they decided to marry immediately after Ellis’ June, 1942 graduation, and spent their first year of married life at various Army officers’ training camps before his unit was sent overseas. He served in the 8 ^th Army Air force stationed in High Wycombe, England. Marion returned to New York, where her first child, Valerie, was born. After the war, there came Elise, Larry, Noel, and Cindy. Despite all the duties involved in homemaking for five children and being a law professor’s wife, Marion continued her poetry and her painting, mostly watercolors, and completed her B.A. at Adelphi College.  Marion’s annual Christmas poems (and many others) are still treasured by her friends and family. The couple were active members of the Congregational Church in Manhasset. In 1957 Ellis was invited to join Ambassador John Hay Whitney at the American Embassy in London as Special Assistant, and Marion became a diplomat’s wife while juggling one baby still in diapers plus several older children in their English school uniforms. After returning from England, the Phillips family lived for another decade on Long Island, attending St. John’s Episcopal Church in Cold Spring Harbor. They spent summers on their island in Moosehead Lake, Marion’s favorite place. In 1970 Ellis took up a new post as President of Ithaca College in upstate New York. In 1976 the couple moved to “Point of View,” a house Marion designed to be ideal for family gatherings, in Sharon, Vermont. Marion published several books and completed the family genealogies of Werthers, Sissons, Phillipses, and Grummans. She convinced Richard Thruelsen to write The Grumman Story (1976) , about her father and his company.  After Ellis suffered a stroke in 1993, they moved to Fox Hill Village in Westwood, Massachusetts, where Ellis lived until his death in 2006 and where Marion lived until her death from pulmonary emboli this month. She is survived by a sister, Florence Hold, and a brother, David Leroy Grumman; her five children: Valerie Parsegian, Elise Watts, Ellis L. Phillips, III (Larry), Kathryn Noel Phil l ips, and Cynthia Prosser; nine grandchildren: Andrew Parsegian, Homer Parsegian, Hardy Watts, Christopher Watts, Hilary Wieczorek, Aram Parsegian, Nicholas Zimmermann, Martin Zimmermann, and Sarah Prosser; and five great-grandchildren, Seth Parsegian, Hardy Watts, Jr., Benjamin Ellis Parsegian, Macy Watts, and Burke Watts. All her descendants were present when she attended her granddaughter’s wedding in April, where she was in great form. The accompanying photo was taken at that wedding.  A memorial service will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, June 29, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Dedham, Massachusetts.