In the arms of angels, Phyllis Hayward Flandreau passed away peacefully on Feb. 3, 2023, at the age of 103.
Phyllis Flandreau, 103, passed away on Feb. 3. An extended family celebration of her life will be held in the Spring.
She was under care at the Hospice of the Fisher Home in Amherst, Massachusetts.
Phyllis was predeceased by her husband, Alexander “Sandy” Flandreau, who died Aug. 8, 2015, at the age of 95. They were married on April 4, 1944. The magic number in their marriage was always “4/4/44.”
Their wedding was simple, in front of a ladies’ sewing circle in a Methodist Church in Baltimore, during a brief furlough granted Sandy before he went overseas to Europe, a sergeant in the Army artillery, 106th Division. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and spent four months as a POW.
With Sandy, in his Army uniform
Phyllis worked in a munitions factory while her husband was at war. She often recalled the night in 1945 when she stood under a streetlamp in Brooklyn, waiting in breathless solitude for Sandy to return.
Phyllis was born in Rutherford, New Jersey, on April 8, 1919. Her mother, Doris Southall Hayward was recovering from the Spanish Influenza. Growing up during the Great Depression, Phyllis, for a time, had only one dress to wear to school. She learned from her early childhood and later challenges during World War II that it was key “to put one foot in front of the other.”
Phyllis’s father, George Moses Hayward, was lucky to get a job at an accounting firm, which guaranteed regular income through the later years of the Depression.
In 1937, Phyllis graduated from Babylon High School in Babylon, New York. She attended Jackson (Tufts) College. As the story goes, the first man Phyllis met on campus was her future husband, Alexander Flandreau. During her first year at Jackson, Phyllis ran for and was elected class president, the first of three terms. She graduated with a B.A. in English in 1941.
At Darien High School Library
She received a Master of Library Science degree from Southern Connecticut State College in January, 1972. Her career was in public schools of Darien. Phyllis worked as an audio-visual librarian at Darien High School from 1966 to 1981.
She had a zest for her profession, and was particularly rewarded by the teaching and mentoring relationships with DHS students and faculty — she did work that she loved. Back then AV included film movie, slide, and filmstrip media and their projectors, vinyl records and their players, audio tape and players, and overhead projectors.
During their long 75 years together, Phyllis and Sandy lived in Brooklyn, New York and in Greenwich, Darien, Ridgefield and Chester in Connecticut. After their dear life-long friends Howell and Marilee Dodd passed away in Chester, Phyllis and Sandy moved in 2006 to Rockridge Retirement Community in Northampton, Massachusetts.
A Rockridge cottage was their home together until Sandy passed in 2015. Phyllis continued to live there, shepherded through the second pandemic of her life under the careful supervision of management and staff at Rockridge. It was safe harbor till the end.
Phyllis’ hobbies included sewing, knitting, crochet, oil painting, throwing pottery, creative crafts (including seashell and tree-nut collages), dried flower arrangements, Christmas and other holiday decorations; games including bridge, chess, scrabble, and canasta, (and poker with her brothers); outdoor pursuits including birding, camping, boating, sailing, snorkeling and beach-combing.
She traveled with Sandy through Europe and the U.S., with beloved repeat visits to Sanibel in Florida. Phyllis was determined to stay as current as she could, using her computer for email and social networking, and an iPad for Facetime and word games.
Phyllis and Sandy received the Spirit at St. Paul’s Church in Darien. “Anointed” by the Spirit, Phyllis found strength, solace and refuge in her repeated prayer “Peace, Love, Joy, and Grace”, which condensed, over time, to “Peace- Love.”
Above all, Phyllis was dedicated to her family, both in raising her sons and in being the matriarch (with patriarch Sandy) of yearly extended family reunions that recurred for decades.
In addition to her husband, Sandy, Phyllis was also predeceased by her brothers, George Southall Hayward (Ruth Mack Hayward); and Robert Edwin Hayward; her brother-in-law, John Hamilton Flandreau (Phyllis “Phiddy” Champlin Flandreau); her nephew, John Robert Hayward; and niece, Judith Hayward Whitbeck (Richard Whitbeck); and her friend and cousin, Ceia Webb.
Phyllis is lovingly and gratefully remembered by her sons, Capt. Mark Endicott Flandreau USN Ret., (Susan Barry Flandreau MAT); and Paul Stradley Flandreau, MD MEd (Carol Ernst Flandreau BSN); granddaughters Lee-Anne Gunn Flandreau (Peter Devon Gunn) and Heather Flandreau (Michael Lunduski); grandsons Collin Alexander Flandreau and Robert Parker Flandreau; nieces Judith Flandreau Dievendorf (Gerald Dievendorf) and Suzanne Flandreau (John Stevenson); her beloved niece and frequent companion, Lynn Hayward McNulty; great-grandson Sawyer Coley Flandreau (Maria Papazaharias Flandreau); great- granddaughters Zophia Rose Lunduski and Hadley Alexandra Gunn; great-great-granddaughter Olivia Rose Flandreau; and many beloved grand and great-grand nieces and nephews.
An extended family celebration of Phyllis’s life will be scheduled in the Spring.
In lieu of flowers, memorial donations may be made to the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts.
— an obituary from Ahearn Funeral Home, where online condolences may be left