Ervin Philipps

Born shortly after his twin brother George, Erv arrived on August 3, 1935 in Essen, Germany. In 1936 his family fled the Nazis via Prague, Genoa and Ecuador before finally landing on Ellis Island after a 5 year odyssey. He was raised in New York City with a brief stop in Holland for boarding school where he and George introduced baseball to the Dutch. Erv and George starred as sprinters on the Forest Hills High track team and Erv graduated as class president and was named scholar athlete of the year by the Long Island Press. He went on to graduate from Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School (Class of 1960).

He interned at Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital in Hanover, NH, where he met the girl that he would later marry. Erv served as a naval medical officer in a destroyer squadron in Newport, RI. During his naval years he traveled the globe, prescribed countless penicillin shots to sailors and played a part in sending Kruschev’s missiles back to Russia following the US Naval blockade of Cuba.

Following a radiology residency at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, he was an academic radiologist at several hospitals in Boston, where he fondly remembered training numerous radiology residents and fellows for 30 years. Late in his career a former resident invited him to join a new private practice group in Albany, N.Y. where he practiced until his retirement. He took up flying while in Albany, earned his pilot’s license and bought an airplane which he and his wife flew for 10 years.

Along with his love of silence and gin, Erv was a devotee of the Oscar Wilde quote, “To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.” Upon retiring in the North End of Boston with his wife, Elizabeth, he aspired to do just that…and by all accounts he succeeded!

We will remember his humor, honor, strong convictions of right and wrong and deep love of family and friends. He was forever changed by the death of his 20 year old daughter Sarah who was on Pan Am Flight 103 bombed by terrorists over Lockerbie, Scotland.

He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Elizabeth (Needham) Philipps, sons Andrew and Fritz, Andrew’s wife, Patty, Fritz’s wife, Laura, and five grandchildren: Tom, Emily, Emma, Owen and Gus; his twin brother George and his wife, Muff; older brother Peter and his wife, Evelyn; nieces Pamela, Dabney, Karen and Laura and nephews Chris, Ben, Bruce and Jared.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in Ervin’s memory to the Sarah Susannah Buchanan Philipps Travel Grant at the University of Colorado, Boulder. https://giving.cu.edu/fund/write-fund