This latest episode in the Blue Roads Changemaker Series features Phyllis Albritton who I have long called “Blacksburg's best-known citizen”. Now, I don't know if it's true, but it is certainly true to me. I've been in Blacksburg for more than 40 years and I don't seem to know a single person who doesn't know Phyllis, too. She's a big presence, and an important one, in our community. Until her recent vision problems began to limit her ability to drive, Phyllis seemed to be at every meeting where decisions were made and every place where voices were raised and people were taking a stand for what is right – especially if that stand highlighted the needs of children, those living in poverty or those oppressed by injustice.
Phyllis is also usually around anytime there is music and dancing to be had. I remember first meeting her years ago when my boys were youngsters at Blacksburg Presbyterian Church where she always greeted us with enthusiastic warmth that exuded the love of the faith she lives out loud in ways that most main stream Protestants seem to keep under wraps. Not Phyllis! She lives her faith in a big way in a life that has changed the lives of many of us around her for the better.
Tune in below to learn about her life as a changemaker making the world a better place by working for education, equity and justice for all. (Note: You’ll really want to watch the video or listen to the podcast for the details of Phyllis’s “Homegrown Solutions for a Patchwork World” that are difficult to capture in this short summary.)
HOMEGROWN PHYLLIS
Phyllis was born in Binghamton, New York to parents who lived “the American Dream.” Her mother was an immigrant from Ukraine who was raised in the Russian Orthodox Church. Her fondest memories are attending church services at St. Peter and Paul's Russian Orthodox Church in Endicott, NY, including midnight Christmas and Easter services. As a member of the a cappella choir from age 10, she would stand in the choir loft for the 2-hour service in Old Slavonik even though she could sit. Her Jewish father grew up in New York City, after his family had migrated from Poland. Although she was raised in the Methodist Church, she remembers fondly learning the songs and traditions from both sides of her family that she still celebrates today.
When speaking about her parents, her face lights up as it does often when she shares recollections of people and experiences throughout her life.
They never met a stranger. They had three women's and children's clothing stores in Binghamton, Endicott and John City. They were always giving to the poor. They were always taking clothes and food. My mother would always take flowers to people who were shut in.
I had such caring, wonderful parents. I am who I am today because of those two amazing souls who danced all their lives. They met dancing at Coney Island…
When her dad asked to take her mother home that day, she said,
‘Yes, if I pay my own way.' They got married in 1929 and danced all their lives. The very night that Daddy died. They danced to Lawrence Welk in the kitchen.
It’s no wonder Phyllis is such a dancer!
She has such fond memories of singing in choirs, dancing and traveling.
My family was really amazing…Daddy took us to Florida, to Chicago, to New York, to Lake George.
(As an aside, Phyllis explains that Scott's Family Resort at Oquaga Lake in Deposit, NY was first choice as the setting for the movie “Dirty Dancing” that wound up being filmed closer to her current home in Blacksburg at the Mountain Lake Resort. Along with other Blacksburg residents, Phyllis was an extra in a dance scene of the film.)
At sixteen, Phyllis had a life changing opportunity to travel with the Christian Youth Caravan through Europe and the Middle East.
We went with one knapsack, third-class all the way.
She remembers the trip through England, France, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Israel with great fondness, but also recalls visiting one of the first Palestinian refugee camps. This experience remains with her as she ponders both her pride in her Jewish heritage and her sadness at the way the Palestinians have been treated. Her awareness of the injustices and inequities in the world seem to have been cemented during this time.
When it came time for her to go to college, Phyllis says:
I wanted to go as far away as they'd let me go from Binghamton.
She settled on Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, first suburb north of Chicago. At first she had no interest in the sorority-girl life after being in girls' clubs and sororities during middle and high school, but she soon discovered she couldn’t do the things she wanted to do at Northwestern without joining. For starters, she gathered all of the university’s fraternities and sororities together to host international students, something they'd never done before. This was only the beginning of her work as a changemaker.
PHYLLIS’S PATCHWORK OF SOLUTIONS
It’s difficult to separate the solutions Phyllis has worked on from the “diversity quadrant” we call the “Patchwork” in our Blue Roads model for changemaking. The issues she cares about so deeply invariably relate to the equitable treatment of humans across differences and categories of need.
While a junior at Northwestern, Phyllis learned about a Presbyterian inner city program in Chicago in need of volunteers. Working for that program, she became acutely aware of the poverty and hardships for the Black children in the community they served.
She later helped bring her dear friend, Bud Ogle, to Northwestern as minister for Presbyterian students there. He started a ministry for a poor Black community in northeast Chicago called “Good News Partners.” Phyllis led groups of teens, college students and adults from Blacksburg back there for 20 years to help keep the buildings up to standards.
Across her adult life she continued her love for travel to learn and to serve. Prime examples are her travels to Nigeria in 1960 with Operation Crossroads Africa and to Nicaragua with Witness for Peace in 1985 during the Contra War as well as traveling with Trees, Water, People to Guatemala and El Salvador.
Her second husband, Clark Webb, led groups to San Jose de Bocay in Nicaragua for twenty years. San Jose de Bocay later became Blacksburg, Virginia's Sister City.
All of these experiences enriched and informed her passion for education and equity back home.
Phyllis wonders for good reason how two of the poorest countries she’s visited in the western hemisphere, Cuba and Nicaragua, can both manage to have medical care for everyone as well as mandatory education from three months of age through college when we can’t seem to manage anything close to that in one of the richest countries in the world.
These questions led her to take action for better conditions in each community in which she’s lived and worked across her adult life.
During her first husband’s ministry In Charlottesville, Virginia during the Civil Rights Movement, when he accompanied the NAACP President to check on restaurants to make sure they were really desegregating, as the new law required, Phyllis accompanied African Americans to the registrar’s office to make sure they were not harassed when registering to vote.
While in Charlottesville, she also worked with an African American woman to start “The Church Women’s Preschool Experience” for low income five year olds when Virginia had no public kindergartens.
We got the names from social services and picked the children up. We got the women of many of the churches in the area involved. Perhaps the first desegregated school in the South, the school still exists today at Westminster Presbyterian in Charlottesville.
After their time in Charlottesville, she and her husband moved back to Evanston, Illinois for him to go to graduate school. Phyllis became PTA president at their children’s school and worked with the African American parents to oust the racist principal.
By the time she made it to Blacksburg, she was well-practiced in the advocacy and community service guided by her Christian faith. Here, she has worked with the NAACP, the League of Women Voters and served on the Montgomery County School Board, all the while taking every opportunity available to remind everyone that universal preschool is essential for the success of individuals and our society. This is especially critical for so many children living in poverty who currently do not read on grade level by the end of the third grade. This is a documented indicator of who may well end up in prison as adults.
With a focus always on early childhood education, Phyllis worked from her role on the New River Community Action Board to bring the first Headstart programs to our area in Christiansburg as well as Blacksburg Presbyterian Church in the 1990's.
Phyllis later worked with a group of friends who had a dream of creating a childcare center to serve low income working parents of infant and toddlers with both education and care while they worked. In 2003, the Valley Interfaith Childcare Center was born out of this initiative.
Learn more at valleyinterfaithchildcarecenter.org. The center’s mission has grown to include school age children after school and during the summers as well.
CHANGEMAKER PHYLLIS
There’s still hope that the Valley Interfaith Child Care Center will grow in its capacity to serve even more children in our region, but the ripple effects for the children already served across the sixteen years of its existence cannot be underestimated.
Likewise, demonstrable benefits continue for the hundreds of students who attended the Boys and Girls Clubs in our area. Phyllis was instrumental in bringing this program locally to provide after-school and summer programs. Some of these programs are still active today.
She's thankful for the friendships with university students who've joined the work for peace and justice and carried that work into the world sending thanks for the role that she and Clark played in opening their eyes to inequality and injustice.
Likewise, every child she stood up for, every policy she advocated, every person she accompanied to register to vote experienced a change because of the steadfast commitment of Phyllis Albritton. I can’t begin to enumerate the acts of kindness large and small that have passed through her heart and hands into the lives of those around her, but I will share one example from my own family that still moves me greatly.
When one of my teenaged sons was featured in the newspaper after a sporting success, she had the article and images professionally framed and sent to us. She did the same when I was featured in the paper after getting a new job as a school principal. I would not say I knew Phyllis well at all at the time. Yet, she took her time and resources to send two of the most thoughtful gifts we've ever received as a family. These are gifts that I treasure as much for the loving kindness of the sender as for the life events they represent. How many others in our community received such treasures? How many others hope to emulate this kind of thoughtfulness and care for the milestones in the life of another?
To acknowledge her tremendous contributions, Phyllis received the Human Rights Award from Blacksburg Church Women United in 2011. When I think the word “changemaker”, this is the face that I see.
Phyllis says,
My prayer is that we could live in peace. We are all made in God’s image. I don't understand why we can't see that even to this day.
Phyllis sings,
Peace, Peace. Where there is love, there is peace .
Phyllis dances.
Phyllis changes things.
Take a look at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals above. It's easy to see how Phyllis Albritton's work across the decades has had a direct impact on #1 – No Poverty, #4 – Quality Education, #10 – Reduced Inequalities, and #16 – Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.
What have I missed? After all, it is important to note how all of the goals interact with the others. It is also essential to celebrate the work of community leaders like Phyllis Albritton who work to bring them all to fruition.
Get in touch below to let us know what you think and how you, too, are working on the SDG's.
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