Christine Philp

1942 - 2021

Christine E. T. Philp

1942-2021

New London --

Christine Philp, 78, of Otterville Road, died peacefully on Sunday, March 7th in her home surrounded by her children and grandchildren. Born in Boston on November 25th, 1942, the daughter of John and Elora Trump, she graduated from Winchester High School in 1960 and earned her B.A. in English Literature from Mount Holyoke College in 1964, with a prize for poetry. On August 22, 1964 she married a longtime family friend and M.I.T. doctoral student of her father’s, Sanborn Fellows Philp, at the Church of the Advent, Boston; and resided briefly on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, MA, before moving to Pittsfield Massachusetts, where she lived happily for nearly 50 years until her husband’s death in 2012. In 2016 she moved to NH to be with family. Mrs. Philp was an avid reader, poet and gardener, as well as a singer and music lover. She sang with the Berkshire Concert Choir, studied organ, and was a member of the Bluestockings and the Lenox Garden Club. She was a talented painter in oils and watercolor, and passed her love of painting on to her children and grandchildren. With her husband, Sandy, she started a Chamber Music Society, bringing string quartets to perform in the Pittsfield area. She could make the frailest plant thrive and bloom and the beautiful gardens she planted and cared for with her husband will always be remembered by her family. She was an ardent convert, with her husband, to the Catholic faith and loved both the beauty of her Anglican heritage and the rich intellectual and literary tradition of the Catholic Church; a love she passed on to her descendants.

Mrs. Philp is survived by her son, John Philp of Massachusetts, her daughter Katherine Yost of New London, her sister Karen (and husband Chuck) of New Mexico, 8 grandchildren, and 3 great-grandchildren.

A Requiem Mass was celebrated on Saturday, March 20th at 1:00 pm at St. Patrick’s Church in Newport, NH. Private burial will take place in the spring at Wells River Cemetery, Wells River, Vermont.