Phillips, William Rufus – Winston

PINNACLE Jul. 20, 1933 – Dec. 22, 2018 William Rufus Phillips, age 85, died Saturday, December 22, at Forsyth Medical Center. He was a son of The Rev. Albert Rufus Phillips and Ruth Burnley Cook Phillips. He was born on July 20, 1933, in the Phillips family home in Dalton, Stokes County, in the house which his grandfather and grandmother, Dr. Matthew D. Phillips and Margaret Melissa Dalton Phillips, built in 1888. William began his early education in the public schools in Stokes County. In 1950 he went to The Stony Brook School in Stony Brook, Long Island, for his last two years of high school. Then in 1952 he entered Princeton University. After a year there, William volunteered for the U.S. Army to serve during the Korean Conflict. The Army sent William to the Army Language School, Monterey, CA, to study the Russian Language; he graduated with a diploma in Russian in 1954, and he spent one year in military intelligence at the Nato School (NSO) in Oberammergau, Germany, and in Frankfurt, Germany. In 1956, William resumed his college education at Wake Forest University, earning an undergraduate degree in Psychology, and a Master of Arts (MA) degree in English. He then began 35 years of college teaching, spending the last 30 years in the English Department at Winston-Salem State University, where he retired in 1998. William and his wife, Kay McGee Phillips, moved to Dalton in 1968 to live in the Phillips family home where they have lived since.

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