Phyllis Teeple

A memorial service for Phyllis will be held Friday, August 9, 2024 from 10:00 AM to 11:00 AM at Fairhaven Memorial Park Mortuary, 1702 Fairhaven Avenue, Santa Ana, CA 92705. Following the memorial service will be a committal service from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM at Fairhaven Memorial Park & Mortuary, 1702 Fairhaven Ave, Santa Ana, CA 92705.

Margaret Phyllis Thornburg, born on November 10, 1928, was the only child of Esther (Hickman) Thornburg and Ralph Waldo Emerson Thornburg. Her mother, Esther, was a grade school teacher and her father, Waldo (“Watt”) was a dentist who worked in India for a couple of years in addition to locally in Muncie, Indiana. She went by her middle name Phyllis, and was endearingly known to family and friends as “Phyl,” “Phid” or “Phiddie.”

She grew up on a small farm in Redkey, Indiana, attended Redkey High School and played basketball on the high school team. She was very gregarious, and joked how she got fouled out in one game before her parents even arrived to see her play.

She attended DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, receiving a Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish in 1950. Always very social, she was a proud member of the Delta Zeta Sorority and won the “Miss Legs” contest at DePauw in 1948, and was Attendant to the DePauw May Day Queen And in 1955, when she took a vacation to Hawaii on the cruise ship S.S. Lurline, she was named “Miss Lurline.”

After college, she found a job and lifelong friends at Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals In Indianapolis, Indiana, where she worked as a Secretary.

Several years later, in the mid ‘50’s, she and a few of those dear friends moved out west to Los Angeles, where she continued her secretarial career, working for ad agencies, whose clients included the likes of popular comedians George Gobel and Jack Benny; and later in life worked for individual clients.

Through mutual friends, she met, and later married Gifford Teeple, Jr., on May 29, 1960. They settled in Manhattan Beach, California, where they raised their son, Skip. She loved the beach, and was a perfect Midwest transplant to the California coast. Gifford passed away in 1986, and Phyllis continued living in their home there, and later moved to an assisted living and then a nursing home in the area.

She took great joy and pride in loving and raising her family, making their house a home, attending the Manhattan Beach Community Church, tending her roses, excelling in her profession, and was always thoughtful and compassionate to neighbors, friends and strangers. She had a great sense of humor, and loved to sing, often on the spur of the moment when we took her on drives to go out to lunch. She loved to travel, and went on several trips abroad with best friends to England, Ireland and Italy, though Ireland was definitely her favorite. She’d be the first to admit that she wasn’t the athletic type, but tended toward the more, shall we say, “leisurely pursuits” like movie-watching, reading the LA Times, watching Law and Order on TV, and last but certainly not least, enjoying a glass or two of her favorite “liquid refreshment,” Chardonnay. She always had an infectious smile and a ready laugh, and though she went by her middle name of Phyllis, no doubt her friends would say her middle name was really “FUN”!