Edward Bayne Phillips

Born: June 26, 1939
Died: November 9, 2005

Edward Bayne Phillips was the son of Dr. Edward S. Phillips '35 and Alice Grahm Bayne Phillips. He was born in Madison, Wisconsin, where his father was in medical training. He prepared for Yale at Tridelphia High School in Wheeling, West Virginia and at Phillips Exeter Academy.

Bayne was a resident of Timothy Dwight where he was in the Pre-Med Club and played soccer and volleyball. He played Freshman lacrosse and was on the varsity team. Bayne was a member of the Rifle Club and competed on the varsity rifle team. Bayne was a pre-med student. He majored in psychology and was on Dean's List.

Bayne's family lived outside of Wheeling on a mountain property known as Washington Farms. In his youth on the farm he learned to fish and to hunt with his dogs and developed the ability to fix just about any piece of machinery.

After graduation from Yale he attended Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia continuing a long family tradition. He was the fifth family member to attend, preceded by his father, uncle, great uncle and grandfather. He then went to Colorado for his internship and residency in radiology at Presbyterian Medical College in Denver and fell in love with the state.

Upon completion of his residency, Bayne joined the Navy (as had his father during WW II) in order to serve aboard ship. He avoided orientation training by postponing his reporting date (in order to squeeze in 2 more weeks of fly fishing in Montana), but when he arrived in Viet Nam he learned that he had been detailed to the Marines and so served his tour on the ground in country, not at sea.

On his release he returned to Denver to practice radiology taking time off to ski, fly fish and 4-wheel. He purchased a condo in Vail and used it as a base for his activities while maintaining an apartment in Denver. In 1977 he married the former Marsha Hendershot and they had one daughter, Allyssa Bayne Phillips. Marsha is a nurse practitioner in Denver.

"Everything he did after Allyssa's birth," Marsha reports "was to make sure she was educated and cared for to the best of his abilities. He was so proud of Allyssa and he loved her so much."

He then sold the Vail property and purchased land in Grand Lake, Colorado, a less developed mountainous area. "He poured over plans for a new home after working very full days in radiology and soon the family had a new 'mountain retreat'," Marsha said. "There he had many fishing buddies, probably the most camraderie he had experienced." Bayne also excelled in fine cooking. "We always hoped he would prepare too much so we could share leftovers," she reminisced.

Bayne never lost his love of sports, from soccer and lacrosse to riflery and competition shooting, and helped coach his daughter and her soccer teams. He retired from medicine at age 53 in 1992 to pursue his passion for finance, his joy in fishing and his commitment to family time.

Classmate Rev. Rod Quainton, Bayne's sophomore roommate in TD, recalls a favorite memory: "Between Freshman and Sophomore year I visited Bayne at his family's mountaintop Valhalla in West Virginia. It seemed as though his family owned the whole mountain and I think they did. I remember careening around in an off road vintage WW II jeep and down the mountainside in the midst of a forest. This was before jeeps and off road vehicles became status symbols. He taught me to shoot a rifle on that visit, at squirrels, I think. For this Pacific Northwest boy, I had entered a complete new world of Southern gentility, down to the pig roast with the whole pig roasted slowly over a pit in the ground by family retainers. We even took in a Pirates game at the old Forbes Field in Pittsburgh which became part of my life-long quest to attend a game in every major league city. ... Bayne was a good Yale friend and roommate. I was always impressed that he wanted to be a doctor like his dad and that he aced Organic Chemistry!"

Bayne died suddenly and unexpectedly of a cerebral hemorrhage in his Grand Lake mountain home on November 9, 2005. He was survived by Marsha of Centennial, Colorado, their daughter Allyssa, a 2005 graduate of Mt. Holyoke College, and his younger sister Alice Phillips Watson of Virginia. Alyssa, who had been traveling extensively since her graduation, is planning to break from the Phillips medical tradition and pursue a graduate degree in environmental studies.

"He was," Marsha concluded, "pure in spirit with the heart of a warrior. He is missed."