Shirley Marie Phillips, 97 years old, of Henderson, Nevada passed away on September 9, 2024, at home. She was born on July 1, 1927, in Kadoka, South Dakota and raised on a ranch in the Badlands on the Pine Ridge Oglala Sioux Reservation. She was a member of the tribe. She grew up during the Great Depression. She remembered the black dust clouds coming across the prairie. The dust piled up one inch deep on the inside of the closed windowsills. Her dad expanded the ranch by buying surrounding properties from ranchers that failed during the Depression and others who sold their land. She graduated from Kadoka High School in 1944. She also attended Chadron State College in Nebraska to get her teaching certificate and to meet her husband, Joseph H. Phillips, whom she married on November 24, 1948. They moved to Henderson in November 1955. Shirley was a devoted mother while Joe became a teacher in the Henderson School District, which the Clark County School District absorbed. They raised their children, five boys and four daughters in Henderson, Nevada. Shirley later worked as a seamstress for the Nevada Ballet Theatre after Joe retired from the school district as an elementary school principal. They were active members of Saint Peter the Apostle Catholic Church in Henderson. They believed in adventures as they explored the west on road trips with the children and sailed in the Caribbean and South Pacific on sailboats without the children. They traveled extensively throughout the country and abroad. Her husband Joseph Phillips, their oldest son, Paul Phillips, her parents Frank and Susie Bauman, and her brother Frank G. Bauman proceeded Shirley in death. She is survived by her children Rosan Monaghan (Dick), Frank Phillips (Vivian), Joe W. Phillips (Cheryl), Wendy Gillen, Andrew Phillips, Stephen Phillips (Bridget), Barbara Phillips, and Jean Quade (Billy). She has eighteen grandchildren and twenty great-grandchildren. Services will be at 2:00 pm on Wednesday, September 18, at St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Church.
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