We celebrate the life of Eric Phillips, beloved husband of Lynn Phillips, caring father to John, Doug, Jim, and Dave Phillips and daughters-in-law Christine, Marlene, Carol and Alice and happy grandfather to Lauren, Jeffrey, Bryant, David, Audrey, Liz, Katie, Jack, and Julia Phillips and great grandfather to Owen Phillips.
Eric was born in Ohio but moved several times in childhood eventually settling in the east bay area of California with parents Morna and John Phillips. In the early 1940s, he attended Acalanes High School in Walnut Creek and graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1950. He married his college sweetheart, Helen Lynette Laundy, and whisked her off to a joyful and sometimes hectic life hopping from state to state as a petroleum geologist for Gulf Oil Company (and later Chevron). As a geologist he was both scientist and businessman with numerous oil field discoveries and management of Gulf offices. In retirement he contributed signficantly to the understanding of Oklahoma geology and helped unravel the complex offshore geology of southern California.
Eric was a father who took his family on many summer trips across the US, he was a boy scout leader for Troop 188 in Bakersfield, CA and he founded the first Fourth of July celebration in Tyler, TX. In retirement he volunteered at the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier museum stationed in Alameda, CA. In his wood-working shop at home, he created a series of 6-foot diameter squadron seals that still hang in the Hornet today.
Eric's life was filled with adventures, like his numerous geology field trips to Alaska with harrowing helicopter lifts to high mountain peaks and multiple encounters with grizzly bears. But many of his interests were intellectual including an interest in politics, science, education, energy, finance and even the history of various religions. But of course his life-long passion was reserved for geology and his contributions in the field were large both from a business perspective and as a pure science.
In retirement Eric & Lynn toured across North America and Europe with cruises in the Mediterranean, Alaska and the Panama Canal. They visited son Jim and daughter-in-law Carol in Oman to add to their adventures.
We will badly miss him. He was our family leader and he cared deeply for his wife, his sons and their wives and all of his grandchildren. We hope that each member of the family and every friend of Eric and Lynn can contribute a story or a picture on this website so that we can all enjoy and celebrate the life of Eric Phillips.
You can contribute by leaving a note below, or tell a longer story (click on the Stories tab above), or upload a photo (on the Gallery tab above).
Memorial page for Helen Lynette Phillips
We were very sorry to hear of Eric's passing. We particularly remember when Eric and Lynette with Doug, Marlene and family came here to Victoria for our reunion of Lynette's family, the Laundys, in the late 80s. We really enjoyed getting to know Eric and appreciated his genuine interest in the family history. We were really grateful for the research he did on Lynnette's father, Dave's great uncle Lynne and his service in World War 1. We learned a lot from Eric, particularly on the taking of Vimy Ridge by the Canadians in 1917 for which Lynne was awarded the Military Cross.
Wish he'd brought that banjo to the reunion! We will miss his newsy and witty Christmas letters.
Lynette, we are thinking of you and your four sons and their families.
Sincerely, Dave and Janet Laundy, Victoria, B.C.
My condolences to the whole family especially to Aunty Lynnette. I don't know if Uncle Eric talked about this but the first time I met Uncle Eric was during their visit to Maui not to long after we moved there. During the dinner Uncle Eric and I got into an exciting conversation about American history. At the end of it he gave me advice about my passion of history. Either I study history and become a teacher at the college level or become a geologist. I hope sharing this helps during this time.
After I was married to Doug one of the first things I learned about my new father in law was something he had in common with my own father-they both loved music and they both loved to dance. My new husband certainly shared that love of music but not so much the love of dancing, and I remember at our wedding when my father in law and I danced for the first time, after I had just danced with Doug, he whispered "Don't worry, Marlene, you don't have to count for me." A few years later I asked him to give me a quick lesson in the jitterbug, and he was happy to oblidge. He found some headphones and plugged them in a cassette deck and he and I danced to big band music which only we could hear. We danced around the living room much to the amusement of Doug and my mother in law who saw the dancing but without the music. And that's one way I'll always remember my father in law-dancing to his own tune.
