A LIFETIME OF CARING FOR LBI: PHYLLIS PARKER GEE 1935-2024

The family owned store, Parker’s Hardware

Original interview and story by Diane Stulga, 2012 Midsummer Dream Edition; updated by Susan Spicer-McGarry, July 15, 2024

Phyllis with her parents Walter and Martha – Circa 1929. Beach Haven boardwalk can be seen in the background.

If ancestry determined destiny, it could be said that long before her birth, Phyllis Parker Gee was predestined to a life on Long Beach Island. Because she was, as some would say, from historically significant local stock. On her father’s side, Phyllis was a descendant of the Parker brothers — the founders of Parkertown, New Jersey. Through her mother, Martha Elizabeth Mathis, Phyllis was a descendant of the illustrious John Mathis family of Little Egg Harbor. Her parents were pillars of their local community in their own rights.

Phyllis was born on April 17, 1935, on Centre Street in Beach Haven, in the house built by her father, Leslie Reeves Parker. She was raised in Beach Haven where she attended Beach Haven Elementary School. Her walk to school was along abandoned railroad tracks that were once the lifeline of the Island. Though not all that long ago, life on LBI was different in Phyllis’ day. “We used straight pens and inkwells,” said Phyllis. Boys teased girls “by putting their braids into the inkwells.”

Though she was only nine years old at the time, the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 left an impression on Phyllis. “The storm warnings were ominous,” recalled Phyllis. “We were dismissed early from school and my dad was sent home from work. He just barely made it home before the storm hit. Later we found out that everything on the Beach Haven boardwalk, which ran a distance of sixteen blocks, was completely gone. Houses had been washed off their foundations into the sand filled streets. You could walk over cars that had been washed into the bay. Fortunately, the only damage to our house was the brick chimney which broke apart and fell into our neighbor’s driveway. After the storm, Dad gathered up the bricks and made a barbecue pit that Mom used for several days to cook and boil water.”

The Gee house after the 1944 storm

Phyllis recalled the uniqueness of growing up in the close-knit community of LBI in the 1940s and early 1950s. As a young child, she played with friends in the sand dunes and empty fields between the ocean and bay. She recalled with tenderness life-long friendships and the caring community that surrounded them as they progressed from childhood to teenagers. “Most of the local kids learned to drive on the empty streets of the Island in the winter,” said Phyllis. “Back then, Paxton’s Pharmacy in Beach Haven was the place to hang out.” Open year-round, local movie theaters were an important gathering place on LBI for Phyllis’s generation.

In 1962, Phyllis married Bill Gee. Bill established a law practice on the Island and in Toms River. Together they raised their family on LBI. Eventually, Phyllis worked at the Beach Haven Library and went on to serve as the principal library assistant at the Surf City branch of the Ocean County Library. She retired in 2000 after thirteen years of service. Phyllis sang with the Methodist Church Choir for many years. She served as a dispatcher and vice president of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Beach Haven First Aid Squad and was a member of the Ladies Auxiliary of the Beach Haven Fire Company.