Phyllis E. Richter died peacefully in the early hours of July 31, 2020, at age 99. A clinical social worker and professor at Catholic University, Phyllis was the wife of the late Albert J. Richter and a longtime resident of suburban Maryland. She was born in 1921 in Duluth, Minnesota, part of a Swedish-American family with deep roots in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Her parents, John C. and Grace Y. Eckman, had lost a child earlier, and felt the arrival of their third girl was a blessing. She was an avid reader from an early age and, growing up in the Depression, embraced the progressive politics of the day. She graduated from the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, then received a master's degree in social work from the University of Minnesota. She met Albert Richter in graduate school, and on August 7, 1945, during his military service, the two were married in Spokane, Washington. It was an anxious moment to start a family: one day earlier, the United States had bombed Hiroshima. After a decade living in Minneapolis, the couple moved in 1962 with their three children to the Washington, D.C. area. As the children grew older, Phyllis began working for a series of social services agencies in suburban Maryland. She worked first with single mothers in need and then with couples and families with children. Later, she opened a private counseling business and served as an outside advisor to the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health. She was a longtime active member of the League of Women Voters and Cedar Lane Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Maryland. She was an avid swimmer and walker and a believer in a healthy lifestyle. She loved Wallace Stegner's books and BBC dramatizations. For decades, she brought her scattered extended family together with Sunday meals at her home on Kingston Road in Kensington, Maryland. She was self-reliant and could speak up for herself, even as she got older. In her late 80s, on a trip with friends in Europe, she lost her passport and had to find her way alone across the continent by train to Paris to obtain a replacement, though she spoke only English. She was predeceased by her beloved husband in 1996, then lived for 19 years in the Maplewood Park Place senior community in Bethesda, Md. She is survived by daughter Lisa Richter (Robert Mai) of St. Louis, daughter Mary Ramirez de Arellano (Rafael) of Damascus, Md., son Paul Richter (Karen Tumulty) of Chevy Chase, Md., ten grandchildren and four great grandchildren.
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