Phyllis Nicholl

Phyllis was the oldest of five children of Leo and Marguerite Williams McDade. In 1926 when Phyllis was 14, the McDade family moved to Amarillo where she attended St. Mary’s Academy until graduation in 1930. She then attended Incarnate Word College (now University) in San Antonio on a scholarship in 1931-32, and returned to Amarillo to help out when her mother had a new baby girl named Pat. She then attended Amarillo College in 1932-33.

She married Worth Nicholl in Sacred Heart Cathedral in 1935. After living briefly in Paris, Texas, and then Ft. Worth, where son Rex was born, Phyllis and Worth settled in Amarillo, where Larry, Clark and Sandy were born. Ever since, St. Mary’s Parish, its church, school, people and activities were the center of her life. She was a charter member of Ave Maria Circle of St. Mary’s Rosary Altar Society, founded around 1937.

Phyllis was a fiercely independent matriarch, with a lifetime devoted to her family, church, community and students. She raised her four children as a single mother after Worth died in a plane accident near Albuquerque in 1955. She taught Kindergarten at St. Mary’s for 26 years. She spent summers in San Diego with her sister Pat, and holidays visiting her children and grandchildren. She also loved square dancing, and was a regular member at local clubs, as well as dancing at conventions and clubs all over the country. Phyllis enjoyed playing Canasta weekly with her St. Mary’s friends.

She cherished and lived her Catholic faith, attending daily Mass at St. Mary’s. She was a minister of hospitality for her whole life, greeting St. Mary’s church-goers every Sunday morning for decades, as a Eucharistic minister to Catholic patients in nursing homes and in Northwest Texas Hospital, as well as being a member of the Legion of Mary, Catholic Daughters, and Altar Society.

The family asks that memorials be made in her memory to the St. Anne’s Fund of St. Mary’s Cathedral School, a scholarship fund for children in need of assistance.

Phyllis is survived by her children: Monsignor Rex Nicholl of Amarillo, Worth Larry and Virginia Nicholl of Irvine, California, Clark Nicholl of San Antonio, and Sandy Hoch and Thom Jurkiewicz of Springfield, Virginia; her grandchildren Debye, Colette, Andrew, Rebecca, Michael, Rachel, Renee, and Roxanne; and her great-grandchildren Sido, Isaac, Sarah, Morgan, Daniel, Ian, June, Hannah, and Naomi. She is pre-deceased by her siblings Leo, Jack, Dan, and Pat, and her grandchildren Robert and Maria.