FUNERAL SERVICE: Wednesday, June 3, 3:00 PM at Arlington Memorial Park

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Meeting ID: 869 9756 8442
Passcode: 963008

OBITUARY: 

Phyllis Shavin, of Sandy Springs, Georgia, whose eye for design lit up home interiors and whose compassion guided the elderly through the struggles of infirmity and aging, died on Saturday, May 30. She passed away peacefully, surrounded by family.

Phyllis was born on September 24, 1929, in New York City to Samuel and Julia (Feinberg) Grumet. An only child, Phyllis spent her early life in Brooklyn, surrounded by loving cousins and friends.

“We were all happy in Brooklyn,” she once recalled. “We sat out on the benches. We played on the stairs of the apartment buildings. We knew everything about everyone. If someone was sick, we babysat. I was lucky to have so many children around.”

The family later moved to Manhattan, where her father thrived in the handbag business. However, the move took a toll on the family. “When we moved to Manhattan, I lost all my contact with my cousins,” Phyllis said. When Phyllis was 15, her mother died of complications from diabetes.

Phyllis graduated from Julia Richman High School and attended Indiana University in Bloomington where she studied art and met her future husband, Norman Shavin, a student of history and a budding journalist. They married in 1951. His newspaper career took them to Jackson, Mississippi, Louisville, Kentucky, and eventually Atlanta, with a brief stint in Bethesda, Maryland, when Norman took a job as Radio-TV director of the newly created Peace Corps.

The couple had three children, and Phyllis blossomed as an interior decorator before returning to college and earning a master’s degree in counseling at Georgia State University. She worked in gerontological counseling at the Jewish Community Center in Midtown Atlanta. She volunteered for Hadassah and the annual Brandeis Book Sale. She was a longtime member of Ahavath Achim Synagogue. 

Phyllis had a quick wit and loved wordplay. She also loved books and art and classical music and had an eclectic sense of design. Phyllis was a longtime exercise enthusiast, who took three-mile walks daily, often twice a day. She possessed a rare talent for misremembering book and movie titles as well as song names. Once, when asked to purchase the hit record “Killing Me Softly,” she returned home empty handed and defiant: “Nobody’s ever heard of ‘Murdering Me Silently.’”  

Phyllis is survived by her daughter Julie (Harry) Shavin, son Mark (Marla) Shavin, daughter Dana (Daryl) Shavin; grandchildren Leah (Omar) Katz, Jesse Katz, Amadea Katz, Naomi (Ben) Shavin, Adam Shavin, Sarah Shavin; and great granddaughter November Black.

Phyllis was predeceased by her husband, Norman; her longtime companion, Alvin Boskoff; and by her great grandson, Jack Menachem Samuels.

The family gratefully acknowledges the wonderful caregivers who attended to Phyllis in her final years, among them Mila, Shea, Selam, Shirlee and Grace. Donations in Phyllis Shavin’s memory can be made to Congregation Or Hadash or the Alzheimer’s Association.