Phyllis Green Belk had the instincts of a reporter and the heart of a community organizer, and she spent ninety-one years using both to make the world more just, more connected, and more human. She was born in Cuero, Texas, daughter of Judge Howard P. Green and Marie Browan Green, and came of age in a family that understood public life as a form of service. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in journalism, and her first job – chasing stories as a reporter in Galveston – turned out to be some of the happiest times of her life. She later recalled those days with particular warmth: part of a young team of newspaper reporters, curious, in motion, asking questions of anyone who would answer.
Those who knew Phyllis in her final years would recognize that woman immediately. She never stopped being a reporter at heart. Meet her for the first time and you’d find yourself on the receiving end of a cascade of questions – about your work, your travels, your hopes – delivered with a genuine hunger to know you. She made people feel, from the first conversation, that their story mattered.
Phyllis moved in 1962 from Dallas, Texas to Springfield, Pennsylvania where she commenced a career of uncommon range and purpose. She moved through public relations and communications roles in Pennsylvania’s school districts, eventually earning a Master of Education from Temple University, and rising to director-level positions at the William Penn School District and Pennsylvania State University’s Wilkes-Barre campus. From 1994 to 2001 she served as Executive Director of the Delaware Valley Child Care Council, work that reflected a lifelong commitment to the wellbeing of children and the women who so often bear primary responsibility for raising them.
That commitment was the thread connecting everything. Whether she was founding the Delaware County Women’s Conference, chairing the Luzerne County Commission for Women, serving as President of the Eastern Delaware County Chapter of American Association of University Women, or championing the Equal Rights Amendment, Phyllis kept her eye on the same horizon: a world in which women had full access to education, healthcare, economic power, and the freedom to determine their own lives. The honors followed – the 1989 Athena Woman of the Year from the Greater Wilkes-Barre Chamber of Commerce, the 1990 Eastern Pennsylvania Women in Business Advocate of the Year from the U.S. Small Business Administration, appointments by Governor Casey to the Pennsylvania Commission on Women – but she wore them lightly. They were evidence of the work, not the point of it.
The work, for Phyllis, was always personal. She traveled with Habitat for Humanity to South Africa, Armenia, Georgia, and following Hurricane Katrina, Louisiana with former President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn Carter to build homes for families who needed them desperately. In 1993, soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, she was named to a USAID delegation to Warsaw, Poland, where she helped establish the Friends of Litewska Children’s Hospital Foundation and convened a volunteer Board of Trustees that raised well over a million dollars to improve the hospital’s facilities and services. She was a founding member of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Wyoming Valley and served as president of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia – congregations that, like all the communities she touched, were shaped by her gift for bringing people together.
Phyllis loved to read, and she believed reading was the key that opened every other door. “If you can read, you can do anything,” she told her grandchildren, again and again. In her eighties, she read to third graders in Philadelphia’s inner-city classrooms, still showing up, still present, still believing in the particular magic of one person giving their attention to another.
In her final six years, Phyllis lived at Simpson House in Philadelphia, where she gathered a new circle of friends who loved her deeply, and where her work chairing the Library Committee will leave a lasting mark on the community she came to call home.
Family was at the center of everything. Phyllis was immensely proud of her four children and their spouses, and she adored her grandchildren – each of whom was certain they were her favorite, and each of whom was right. Her great-grandchildren thrilled her. She made frequent trips to Poland, Texas, Florida, and New York to be with the people she loved, and she always wanted as much family around her as possible.
She was predeceased by her husband, George W. Belk III, her sister Mary Lee Shomaker, and her brother John M. Green. She is survived by her sister Sally Green of Round Rock, TX, her four children, George Belk and his wife Cindy of Walburg, TX, Howard Belk and his wife Carrie of Ossining, NY, Elizabeth Belk and her husband James Archbold of Philadelphia, PA, and Jack Belk of Parkland, FL; eight beloved grandchildren, Lauren Hodgkins, Tiffany Wilson, Sophie, Lily and Clara Belk, Liam Archbold, Jack and Ryan Belk; and four great-grandchildren, Harrison, Hazel and Hendrick Hodgkins, and Reid Wilson.
Phyllis Green Belk was a convener – of her family, her friends, of causes, of communities, of strangers who became friends. She believed that the lives of women were worth fighting for, that the stories of ordinary people were worth telling, and that showing up, in person, with your full attention, was the most powerful thing you could do. She did it for nine decades. The world is a better place for having had her amongst us.
A memorial service open to all is planned for 10am Saturday, June 6 at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, located at 2125 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.
This obituary was published by Cremation Society of Pennsylvania – King of Prussia.
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