Joann Hudson Phillips, who raised her family in Lynnfield, died peacefully on September 4, 2026 at her home in John’s Island, Indian River Shores, Fla. She was 86.
She was born in Augusta, Maine on March 16, 1940, the daughter of Robert Hudson and Mary Bird, and grew up in Rockland, where she was in the drama club and the drum and bugle corps color guard, served on the Lobster Queen’s court at the Rockland Lobster Festival, and met George Phillips, her future husband. She graduated from Forsyth Dental as a hygienist in 1960, married George in 1961, and in 1967 they settled in Lynnfield, where they raised Jeffrey, Peter, Kathryn and Andrew. His career then took them to New York from 1985 to 1990 and to Chestnut Street in Boston until 2010; they moved to Vero Beach in 2000. For 40 summers the family gathered at their house on Wingaersheek Beach in Gloucester. She began painting in the 1980s and left her family a statement on the honesty of a brush stroke.
She leaves her husband, George; her sister, Sandy Strine of Wilmington, Del.; her children, Jeffrey Phillips of Brooklyn, N.Y., Kathryn Kearney of Needham and Andrew Phillips of Westport, Conn.; and eight grandchildren, Nathaniel and Ruby Phillips, Evelyn and Aaron Kearney, William, Aidan and Caroline Phillips, and Floyd Phillips.
A Mass of Christian Burial is Monday, September 14 at 10 a.m. at Holy Cross Catholic Church in Vero Beach. Arrangements are by Strunk Funeral Homes, Vero Beach. The family suggests donations to the VNA Hospice Foundation, 920 37th Place, Suite 101, Vero Beach, FL 32960.
Compiled from information published by Strunk Funeral Homes and Crematory. Photograph courtesy of the family via Strunk Funeral Homes and Crematory. This is our own summary, not the family’s obituary; read the full obituary and leave a condolence at the funeral home’s page on Legacy.com. Corrections: we will fix any error promptly.
