Phoebe Tompkins

Phoebe Maravel Tompkins died on December 1, 2018.  Born in Brooklyn, NY on January 6, 1925, Phoebe graduated from Hunter High, Hunter College and Columbia Law School.  She met her future husband, Rex Tompkins, at Columbia.  He had returned from Europe after serving in the Army Air Corps during WW II.  After graduation Phoebe passed the New York bar exam on the first try which was very rare at that time.  She went on to a successful career practicing law in New York City for 30 years culminating in a 3 year term as an administrative law judge in the Bronx.  Phoebe was loved for her readiness to laugh and her eloquent quoting of the ancient classics.  She had a life-long love affair with the English language, classic literature and poetry and was an endlessly interesting person, exercising with ballet dancers at lunchtime (her office was near Broadway), teaching herself to play the piano in her seventies and writing poems on the back of pictures and sending them as postcards to friends and family.

Phoebe is survived by 3 children, Andrew and wife Candace Tompkins of Fairview, PA, Diana and husband Mark Schwatka of Larchmont, NY, and Penelope and husband Michael Mittag of S. Burlington, VT.  In addition Phoebe is survived by 7 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren.  Memorials are not necessary, however, you might try to write a poem, put it on the back of a picture and send it to a friend.  She would like that.

Special thanks from the family go to Manchester Commons and Home Instead Senior Care for the care and compassion shown to our mother during the last year of her life.

Funeral arrangements were entrusted to Burton Funeral Home, 525 Main St. East, Girard.