Descendants of Captain Arthur Fenner
Phyllis Reid Fenner
[b 24 Oct. 1899; d 26 Feb. 1982] Phyllis was a graduate of Mt. Holyoke College (South Hadley, MA), and earned a library science degree from Columbia University in NY. She spent most of her career as a librarian at Plandome Road School, Manhassett, NY, and Manhasset Long Island High School, until her retirement. She also taught part-time at the Library School of St. John’s University, Jamaica, NY and was a member of several professional organizations.
Phyllis was one of the founding editors of the Weekly Reader and she compiled 79 anthologies for children, including Giants and Witches and a Dragon or Two (1943), Feasts and Frolics (1949), Ghosts, Ghosts, Ghosts (1952), The Proof of the Pudding (1957), and Something Shared (1959). In retirement, she lived in Manchester, VT, and traveled frequently with her housemate Clara Sipprell, a Canadian-born photographer. Phyllis was a book reviewer and lecturer as well. Phyllis’s niece Carol Fenner was an accomplished author. Phyllis never married.
My Aunt Phyllis was a school librarian at Plandome Road School, Manhassett, NY, for 35 or more years. Her first published work was Our Library, the story of how she reorganized the library and interested the children in reading by her story telling. She could tell hundreds of stories from memory, most of them fairy tales or Rudyard Kipling “Just-So” stories or “Riki-Tiki-Tavi.” When she came to visit her brother and his family, she would regale my friends and me with these same tales. She was an amazing person. She published a number of anthologies of fairy tales and other children’s reading over a forty-year career. —David Fenner, 14 June 2009
Phyllis Fenner, Plandome Road School, Manhassett, NY, 1920s.