Ervin Phillips ’57

Ervin Phillips ’57 died on June 28 in the care of hospice. Erv was born shortly after his twin brother, George, in Essen, Germany. In 1936 his family fled the Nazis via Prague, Genoa, and Ecuador before landing on Ellis Island after a five-year odyssey. He was raised in New York City with a brief stop in Holland for boarding school. Erv and George starred as sprinters at Forest Hills (New York) High School. Erv was class president and named scholar athlete of the year by Long Island Press. At Dartmouth Erv was a history major, premed, a member of Alpha Theta and Alpha Kappa Kappa (medical fraternity), and on the track team. He earned his diploma from Dartmouth Medical School in 1958 and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School in 1960. He interned at Mary Hitchcock Hospital. Erv served as a naval officer on a destroyer squadron based in Newport, Rhode Island. He traveled the globe, prescribed countless penicillin shots to sailors, and was involved in the Cuban missile crisis. Following a radiology residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Erv worked for 30 years as a radiologist at many hospitals in Boston, then joined a private practice group in Albany, New York, until retirement. He took up flying in Albany, bought an airplane and flew for 10 years. Erv is survived by his wife, Elizabeth, brother George, and sons Andrew and Fritz. Daughter Sarah died on Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie, Scotland.