Phyllis Abad

1935 - 2025

Phyllis Abad
07/27/1935 - 10/08/2025
Phyllis Abad, native and lifelong resident of San Francisco, lover of travel and the arts, devoted fan of Jeopardy!, shuffled off this mortal coil on October 8th.
Born to Irish immigrants Martin Kyne and Theresa Corrigan Kyne on July 27th, 1935, she graduated in turn from Saint Monica School, Academy of the Presentation and San Francisco College for Women (later renamed Lone Mountain College). Later, she completed a Master's Degree at the University of San Francisco.
Phyllis taught in the San Francisco public schools for thirty-five years, lending her sure pedagogical hand and scintillating, ever-stylish presence to classrooms at George Peabody, Longfellow and Commodore Sloat schools. Her expectations for her students were always high; as one fourth-grader observed, "In Mrs. Abad's class, you have to be fast and right." She took a break from classroom teaching for several years in the 1960s to serve as one of Hogan's Heroes: Resource Teachers dispatched by the intrepid Agatha Hogan to support and train classroom teachers at disadvantaged schools. Phyllis returned to the classroom in the 1970s, and was recognized as a Mentor Teacher, chosen to guide and aid new teachers. In the 1988-89 school year, the California Association for the Gifted named her Teacher of the Year for the San Francisco Bay Area.
Retirement allowed her to further indulge her abiding passion for travel, which took her to six continents and all fifty states (Kansas was last to be checked off!). She went on safari in Africa, toured the Five Stans of the Silk Road, traveled in the Soviet Union as it was collapsing, lodged in a monastery in Egypt when her hotel reservation fell through, and took her minor sons to Thailand during the thick of the national unrest that led to the 1973 Uprising. On a more restful note, for many years she made annual trips to Rancho La Puerta, usually along with her girlhood friend Carol Corvino and other chums.
Phyllis continued as an educator in retirement by becoming a docent for the Haas-Lilienthal House, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, de Young Museum and Oakland Museum of California. She also shared her love for her city and its history as a volunteer with San Francisco City Guides; Phyllis stayed on as Coordinator of the City Guides tour of North Beach until the last week of her life. She served on the Boards of Directors of Catholic Professional Women, Good Shepherd Guild, Golden Gate Collectors and California Retired Teachers Association.
In death, Phyllis joins her beloved parents, her cherished aunt Nellie Griffin and her favorite cousins Michael Walsh and Sisters Kathleen and Helen Griffin. She is survived by her sons Terence (with partner Marcus Pon) and David, and by numerous first cousins in the U.S., the U.K. and Ireland, including Ned Kyne of Luimnagh, County Galway, and Packy Corrigan of Farnagh Glebe, County Longford, who live on the farms where her parents were born.
Special thanks to Hospice Nurse Jennifer Chan, dear friend Marianne Petroni and Dr. Lisa Capaldini for care shown Phyllis in her final months and years.
A Funeral Mass will be celebrated on Friday, October 24th at 10:30 a.m. at Saint Stephen Catholic Church, 601 Eucalyptus Drive, San Francisco 94132.
In lieu of flowers, please make a memorial donation to St. Anthony Foundation or to Sisters of the Presentation (3145 Geary Blvd, Box 619, San Francisco, CA 94118).