Phillips gave 40 years of service

Friday, Oct. 24, 1997 | 11:01 a.m.

On her way to Nathan Adelson Hospice on Oct. 15, an ailing Peggy Hyde Phillips told her daughter, Carol Hyde Wilson, to make sure her vote on a particular issue before the Winchester Town Advisory Board was cast the next day.

A community leader who never left anything to chance, Phillips was making sure important business was taken care of. That's how she was as the first woman to serve on the Clark County School Board in the 1950s. That's how she was two days before her death.

"My mother always saw to it that things got done," said Wilson, a computer analyst from San Francisco, who recently returned to Southern Nevada, her birthplace, to be with her mom during her final days. "People on the advisory board told me she was the glue that held them together."

Helen T. "Peggy" Hyde Phillips, the mother of Vietnam War hero Michael Hyde and the School Board trustee responsible for putting the first air-conditioning systems in Southern Nevada schools, died last Friday of cancer. She was 81.

At the request of the 53-year Southern Nevada resident who helped organize the United Fund of Clark County, now the United Way, no services were held.

Wilson said, however, that a "celebration of life" gathering is pending for the longtime docent of the Nevada State Museum and Historical Society and the Spring Mountain Ranch.

"Peggy was a very forthright and forceful member of the first county School Board and was highly respected for that," said R. Guild Gray, the first county superintendent of schools, now retired at age 86.

"It was at her insistence that refrigeration-type air-conditioning was added to the construction plans for new schools (in 1955). It would have come some day. But she was the one who pushed for it then."

As a result, Hyde Park Junior High became the first school in the valley to have air-conditioning. For years, it also served as the area's summer school, where students were able to study in comfort, Gray said.

Twice widowed, Phillips had her share of sorrow. But none was sadder than the loss of her son, Air Force Capt. Michael Lewis Hyde. His F-100D was shot down over South Vietnam on Dec. 8, 1966, after he saved the lives of boxed-in U.S. troops by dropping napalm on the advancing North Vietnamese.

"My mother had gone to La Jolla, Calif., to help her sister, whose husband had just died, and I had to go there and tell her that Michael was gone," Wilson said. "She suffered through years of nightmares, and for a long time believed he would come home one day."

It was not until a quarter-century later that the remains of Michael Hyde, the first Nevadan to graduate from the Air Force Academy, were returned to the United States.

"It brought a sense of closure to my mother's life," Wilson said. "She had long fought to have a Las Vegas school named for him. She tried as late as last year.

"I did not share that dream of hers. I always felt they should have named a school after my mother. She certainly deserved it for the work she did."

As part of her efforts to come to grips with her son's death, Phillips became a sponsor of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. In 1991, she was recognized by Vietnam Veterans of America Chapter 17 for her efforts.

That same year, her son, a recipient of the Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star and Silver Star, was laid to rest on the grounds of the Air Force Academy in Colorado.

Phillips attended that ceremony with former two-term Nevada Gov. Mike O'Callaghan, chairman of the SUN. Phillips was a longtime supporter of the newspaper and served as a SUN Youth Forum moderator from the 1950s through the mid-90s.

Iowa-born and Los Angeles raised, Phillips was known early on for her coal black tresses, freckled face and sparkling blue eyes. Her father, a brick mason, called her "Peg o' My Heart," after the Irish ballad. The nickname "Peggy" stuck. Few people even knew her real first name.

She graduated from high school during the Depression. Although Phillips had earned a scholarship, her family had no money to give her for car fare, so she went to work instead of going to college.

"It was one of my mother's greatest regrets that she was not able to go to college," Wilson said. "That's one reason why she devoted so much of her life to encouraging her children and others to get a good education."

Phillips came to Boulder City in 1944 with her husband, Charles Hyde. They opened Desert Trails, a sporting goods store on Boulder Highway that became one of the era's most popular toy stores. She sold it in 1957, a year after Charles died.

Phillips later served as assistant director of the United Fund and was public relations director of the Nevada Bank of Commerce. Her last job was as personnel benefits manager at the Frontier Hotel in the early 1980s.

In 1961, she married longtime Southern California newspaperman Ed Phillips, who died 24 years later.

The Phillips moved from Boulder City to Las Vegas in 1964. On several occasions she declined to move in with her daughter in California even after her health declined.

"My mother wrote about her health problems in her journal, but never bothered anyone by talking about them," Wilson said. "She refused to leave Las Vegas because her friends and roots were here. And, she loved to watch the desert wildflowers bloom in the spring."

Phillips was vice chairman of the Winchester Town Board at the time of her death. She had served as chairman for a number of years. She originally was appointed in 1979 on the recommendation of former Clark County Commissioner Thalia Dondero.

Phillips' initial venture into politics was with the old Boulder City School Board, where she was first elected in the early 1950s. When the local boards were merged several years later to form the CCSD, Phillips became Boulder City's representative.

Over the years, she was active in local and state politics, working on numerous campaigns.

A world traveler, Phillips visited many lands, including China, Australia, Russia, Europe, Egypt and India. She once went on a safari in Kenya.

"My mother taught me that you only get what you want in life through hard work -- you don't get something for nothing," Wilson said. "The things you have of value, you take care of."

In addition to her daughter, Phillips is survived by two granddaughters, Kristen Gaul of Marin County, Calif., and Gina Kuester of Seattle; and four great-grandchildren, Cory, William and Lauren Gaul and Grace Kuester.