Philip Spalding "Phil" Runge

Philip Spalding Runge, age 87, passed away on Saturday, May 24, at Caribbean Breeze Assisted Living in Huntingtown, MD.

Phil was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on April 10, 1938, son of Anne Spalding and Nathan Philip Runge. He was the first of three children; his sisters Janet Elizabeth and Marilyn Anne, were born in 1942 and 1949, respectively. He grew up in Milwaukee, WI; Evanston, Wilmette, and Winnetka, Illinois; Niles, Michigan, and West Bend, Wisconsin. As a child and young teenager he crafted a recorder at the Chicago YMCA and learned to play it, built a sailboat & won regattas on a small lake in West Bend, played piano (he shared a teacher with Ann-Margret), and taught himself to build radios and other electronics from parts, enthusiasms he would maintain for his entire life. He graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka in 1956, then attended Beloit College where he met his future wife, Marjorie Elliott Lawrence.

After a few years of college he enlisted in the Navy, where he served in Boston, then on the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga, the Naval Reactors Facility near Pocatello Idaho, where he learned and taught nuclear engineering, then worked aboard the USS Enterprise in Norfolk, Virginia, and shipped out on its earliest voyages as a mechanic for its nuclear boilers. In the middle of all this, on a brief leave in 1960, he drove from California to marry Marjorie at her parents' home in Eureka, Illinois. While in Pocatello, Marjorie gave birth to their daughter, Sharon Elliott, in 1962.

He left the navy in 1964, and he and Marjorie moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he would finish his undergraduate degree in psychology while Marjorie worked at the library. Their son Steven Carl was born there in 1965, and soon after the whole family moved to Croton-on-Hudson, NY, when Phil took a job at Union Carbide, teaching welding and other industrial skills. When Union Carbide contracted, he supported the family with a TV and stereo repair business called Tel Fi. In 1971, he was hired by the American Gas Association (AGA) for pipeline safety, and the family moved to Springfield, Virginia.

He and Marjorie joined a Methodist church, where he ushered and was involved in church committees. Phil began playing recorder with a small group that proceeded to play at many historic locations in the area, in full colonial-era dress. He also got involved in teaching CPR for the Red Cross, repaired TV's and stereos for family and friends, and sailed the family's small dinghy in local lakes and his friend Bill's yacht Cheetah on the Chesapeake, a boat he later bought and sailed for many years until he gave it to his daughter, the other sailor in the family. In the late 1980's, he and Marjorie joined Accotink Universalist Unitarian Church. Phil was deeply involved in the board and many committees and reading groups. They both remained in that tight community until an epidemic and age got in the way.

In the early 1990's Phil shifted from the AGA to StatOil, then in retirement returned to his teaching roots as a substitute teacher in Fairfax County schools, and finally a math tutor at Marymount College. Also in retirement he got very involved in the Lifetime Learning Institute, eventually becoming treasurer.

He is deeply missed by his daughter Sharon Elliott (John Balano) Runge and daughters Amalia Elliott (James William Bellows) Castonguay and Shaina Joelle Castonguay and her first husband, Scott Castonguay; his son Steven Carl (Mary Whitney Kelting) and daughter Dorothea Read Runge; his sisters Janet Elizabeth (Gordon) Kipling, and Marilyn Anne Runge, and many nieces, nephews, and grand-nieces and nephews.

Memorial gifts in lieu of flowers may be made to: The Nature Conservancy Chesapeake Bay Foundation

The Nature Conservancy