Teresina Phillips

Teresina Luzzi Phillips was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1954, the eldest of three daughters of Ray and Betty Luzzi. Her childhood unfolded as a series of moves before her family finally settled in Northern Virginia, the region that would become the geographical anchor of the rest of her life. She studied Spanish through high school and into college, an early signal of the curiosity and love of language that would shadow her for the next six decades.

In 1974 she encountered the Unification Church and threw herself into its work with the seriousness that would mark all of her commitments. That involvement led, almost incidentally, to a job as a bookkeeper for a church-affiliated business — and from that first ledger grew an entire career in bookkeeping and accounting. Over the years she worked in retail, real estate, and publishing, eventually developing a specialist's command of state sales taxes and a quiet rapport with the auditors who came to check her numbers.

She met Harry Phillips in 1979 and married him in 1982. They settled in Northern Virginia and raised four children there — Bethany, Toby, Donnie, and Emily — building a household whose rhythms were shaped as much by faith and study as by the ordinary business of family life. Within the local church she became a fixture of Sunday school, not only teaching but writing curriculum for other teachers to use, so that her care for children rippled outward well beyond her own classroom. Parents and former students in Northern Virginia still speak of the dedication she brought to that work, and she carried the same steady leadership into the local Girl Scouts.

Away from spreadsheets and lesson plans, she kept a private inner life rich with small pleasures. She loved classic Hollywood films, word and number puzzles, crochet, and the slow detective work of tracing family ancestry. She and Harry took trips to cultural and historic sites across the United States, and in later years her Kindle was rarely out of reach, almost always with a mystery novel open — Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Tolkien, and Harry Potter were the books she returned to most often.

In the early morning hours of 11 February 2021, after several months struggling with pancreatic cancer, Teresina passed peacefully with her husband, her sister, and her mother beside her. She is remembered for her generosity of spirit, her infinite patience, her indomitable perseverance, and the unconditional love she extended to everyone in her orbit. She leaves behind Harry, four children and their partners, one grandson, another grandchild on the way, her mother Betty Ann, and her two sisters Lisa and Karen.