Phyllis Brody Taylor

As many of you know, Phyllis transitioned peacefully with a smile on her face, and with as complete a life as anyone we have known. She joins her beloved and leaves with us, a map of how to do justly for all. PLEASE add, photos of Phyllis, yourselves, along with memories of this spectacular woman, mother, grandmother, friend, and most importantly, human being on the Memory Wall. Also, please post any poems or quotes that remind you of her in the "Inspired" button above. Thank you.

Obituary

As a young nurse in Philadelphia, Phyllis Taylor met dying people desperate for hospice care. So she did it.

She met people in prison desperate for a healthcare advocate and an empathetic chaplain. So she did that, too.

In 1963, she met Sarah Baker and her family as they struggled to live as the first Black family in Folcroft, Delaware County. The Bakers were desperate for fearless allies to help fend off months of racism and violence. She also did that.


For nearly her whole life, Phyllis Taylor championed peace, justice, and human rights, and helped people who were desperate. She got arrested for civil disobedience, cofounded and directed several nonprofit social service programs, and, with her husband, Richard, helped establish Witness for Peace in Nicaragua, and the Movement for a New Society in Philadelphia.

She fed the hungry at St. Vincent de Paul Church, befriended immigrants and refugees with the New Sanctuary Movement, and comforted children and families at St. Christopher’s Hospital for Children. “Her entire life was about giving,” her son Dan said. “She refused to be someone who watched injustice and did nothing.”

On Thursday, June 4, Phyllis Taylor died of endometrial cancer at KeystoneCare Hospice in Wnydmoor. She was 84.

The Daily News published this story about Mrs. Taylor in 1973.
The Daily News published this story about Mrs. Taylor in 1973.
Newspapers.com
“I really love what I do,” Mrs. Taylor told the Pennsylvania Prison Society in 2025. “I get the satisfaction of being able to journey with somebody, to let them know that they are not abandoned and alone.”

Born in Brooklyn, Mrs. Taylor earned a bachelor’s degree at what is now Arcadia University in 1963. After nursing school, she became a volunteer nurse and then a consultant for the University of Pennsylvania health services at Holmesburg Prison and elsewhere.

“You keep doing it. You keep going and going and going. Sometimes I’m burned out, but I don’t let myself be. That’s a luxury I don’t allow myself.”
Mrs. Taylor to the Pennsylvania Prison Society
She became senior counselor of hospice service for the new Death and Dying Program at Albert Einstein Medical Center’s Northern Division in 1978, and taught classes about death and grief, counseled parents whose babies had died, and comforted patients with terminal illnesses.

Mrs. Taylor graduated from what was then known as Beaver College in 1963. It is Arcadia University now.
Mrs. Taylor graduated from what was then known as Beaver College in 1963. It is Arcadia University now.
Courtesy of the family
She was featured in a 1980 story in the Sunday Inquirer called “The Gift of a Good Death” and said that her own health scares motivated her to embrace nursing. The horrors of the Holocaust, she said, compelled her to human rights activism, and the deaths of a friend, her brother, and her father moved her to hospice work.

“It makes me happy to give someone the gift of a good death,” she told The Inquirer.

“Phyllis gives her time and knowledge graciously. Above all, she deeply cares.”
Dzemila Bilanovic of the Pennsylvania Prison Society in 2025
Mrs. Taylor was also an enterostomal therapy nurse, head of the AIDS committee at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine medical center, and director of education at the old Hospice of Delaware Valley. She wrote research articles for journals and letters to the editor, appeared on local TV and radio shows, and lectured often at conferences and seminars about death, grief, and medical and financial ethics. She never retired.

Mrs. Taylor and her husband, Richard, traveled the world together fighting for peace, justice, and human rights.
Mrs. Taylor and her husband, Richard, traveled the world together fighting for peace, justice, and human rights.
Courtesy of the family
She went on Freedom Rides to integrate buses in the South and moved in temporarily with the Bakers as they sought to integrate Folcroft in the 1960s. In the 1970s, she demonstrated against the Vietnam War and America’s involvement in Iran and elsewhere.

In the 1980s, she taught civil disobedience classes and protested violence at the border between Nicaragua and Honduras. In the 1990s and beyond, she volunteered to protect Muslims and Arabs from reprisals after the Sept. 11 attacks, traveled the world to decry pollution and unfair housing practices, and volunteered with Amnesty International and Planned Parenthood.

“Grief has to happen. If it isn’t allowed at the time of death, it will come up later, over and over again, sometimes in strange and painful ways.”
Mrs. Taylor in 1980
She earned credentials as a chaplain and volunteered for decades with the Pennsylvania Prison Society to counsel and advocate for crime victims and prisoner rights. She was featured in the 2016 documentary Blockade, named the Prison Society’s Volunteer of the Year in 2022, and honored at Arcadia’s 2025 Women Who Lead Forum.

As a chaplain, Mrs. Taylor officiated at weddings and funerals, and advocated for prison reform.
As a chaplain, Mrs. Taylor officiated at weddings and funerals, and advocated for prison reform.
Courtesy of the family
“She felt a deep unwavering need to dedicate all her waking time to marginalized populations,” her son said. “Someone called her a merging of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Mother Teresa.”

Phyllis Claire Brody was born Aug. 10, 1941. She grew up Jewish in Lawrence, N.Y., and joined a Quaker meeting after she moved to Philadelphia.

» READ MORE: Mrs. Taylor shows her courage in 1963

She met fellow peace activist Richard Taylor at a civil rights event in 1962, and they married in 1963, and lived in Germantown, Mount Airy, and West Philadelphia. They reared their son, Dan, and daughter, Deborah, and welcomed Blessing Mtshali and other children and families into their home for extended stays. Her husband died in 2024.


Mrs. Taylor and her husband liked to hike and canoe. She lived with lupus and mailed handmade birthday cards to family and friends year after year.

“What a life well lived,” her son said.

In addition to her children, Mrs. Taylor is survived by her sisters, Margaret Noonan and Audrey Randolph, many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and other relatives. A brother died earlier.

Mrs. Taylor stands with her son Dan in 2017.
Mrs. Taylor stands with her son Dan in 2017.
Handout
A celebration of her life is to be held at 2 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 20, at Germantown Monthly Meeting, 47 W. Coulter St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19144.

Donations in her name may be made to the New Sanctuary Movement of Philadelphia, Box 46242, Philadelphia, Pa. 19160; and Face to Face, 123 E. Price St., Philadelphia, Pa. 19144.

Mrs. Taylor was featured in The Inquirer in 1999.

www.inquirer.com/obituaries/phyllis-taylor-obituary-philadelphia-peace-healthcare-advocate-20260615.html

Inspired Poems or Quotes thinking of Phyllis

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
—Mary Oliver

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Do not be daunted by the enormity of thewworld's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obliged to complete the work. But neither are you free to abandon it. - from the Talmud

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