Regina Mae Phillips was born on May 2, 1940 in Middlebury, VT, and peacefully passed away at home, where she wanted to be, with family, on April 29, 2025.  She passed away just short of her 85th birthday.  Predeceased by her husband, John A Phillips III, and her son, Jay C Phillips.  She is survived by her son, John A Phillips IV, her daughter, Jeananne Phillips Jackson, her grandson, Jason D Phillips (Mallory), and her beloved furry companion, Sheba.

Regina Mae, Regina, Gina Mae, Gina, mom, gramma, Mrs. Phillips, whatever you might have called her, was an amazing mom, gramma, friend, mentor, and family to everyone she ever met.  She took care of everyone.  She hosted Christmas parties that folks begged to come to so they could tour her one-of-a-kind home with thousands of decorations, inside and out, and enjoy her delicious food. She built a shed specially designed for all her home-made yard decorations for Christmas. Christmas was her favorite holiday.  She LOVED the lights and motionettes.  She collected Angels and has a special display case just for them.  She loved carousels and carousel horses.  She loved Cardinals and Hummingbirds.  She had cardinals on everything from shirts to coffee mugs.  She was constantly reading something.  From novels to healing magazines.  Every book and magazine has sticky notes sticking out to mark info that was important to her.  She could tell you everything you needed to know about an herb that you needed to be taking for whatever problem you had.  If you had a problem, she'd research her hundreds of health books and tell you exactly what you needed – whether you asked for the info or not...  If she didn't know how to do something, she'd figure it out and do it.  She was constantly proving her "genius" engineer husband wrong.  She'd let him know about it too!  She loved Patsy Cline and Tanya Tucker and had a stereo in her kitchen so she could listen to them over and over. So many amazing feats she accomplished as a tiny woman, but, none were too big for her.

I don't think there's anything that woman couldn't do.  She was raised on a farm in Vermont, the oldest of 4, and was not afraid of hard work.  From seamlessly moving her family around the world every 3 years when her husband got transferred, getting her solo pilot's license on Kwajalein, raising 3 kids and a grandson, keeping a spotless house and yard, hand-stitching beautifully detailed quilts, creating stocking gnomes to sit in tree stumps everywhere in their house, constructing a huge wall-tree in her garden room and filled it with fairies and tiny treasures, perfecting every craft that she could, making sure everyone in her family had everything they needed AND wanted, to building a log cabin from a kit and surrounding it with water wheels, waterfalls, fish ponds, and every form of flower you could think of.  She drug huge rocks down from the mountain behind their home and built rock walls on their house, their sidewalks, and dozens of rock walls surrounding her huge variety of plants.  It was definitely a showpiece fit for a magazine. It was her dream home and she lived her dream.  There's just not enough paper and ink to tell you how amazing, kind, generous, creative, thoughtful and loving she was.

So, watch for Cardinals, hug your family, call someone you love and haven't talked to in a while, and listen to the song by Tanya Tucker, "Bring My Flowers Now", in honor of her.

As she requested, there will be no service.  She's being cremated and her cremains will go back home where she belongs – right next to her husband.