Harriette Reginald “Reggie” Harrington, Dec. 14, 1937 to Aug. 24, 2024
Phillip Henry Harrington, Feb. 13, 1940 to Aug. 25, 2024
Few things in life are certain, but for the last 64 years, if you asked Phil and Reggie Harrington where they most wanted to be at any given moment, their answer was, “together.” They were extraordinary parents, devoted grandparents, and deeply loyal friends. But more than anything else, Phil and Reggie belonged to each other.
Harriette Reginald “Reggie” Howard made her entrance into this world on December 14, 1937, in Augusta, Georgia. Phillip Henry Harrington followed her on February 13, 1940, in Coco Solo, Panama, where his father, a Naval officer, had been stationed.
Reggie’s family moved once during her childhood, from Augusta to Decatur, Georgia. She graduated from Decatur High School in 1955 surrounded by childhood friends, and when she left for college at The University of Southern Mississippi that summer, it marked the first time she had lived anywhere other than Georgia. Meanwhile, typical of most military folks, Phil’s family moved every year or so, following his father from one duty station to the next. When Phil graduated from Norfolk Catholic High School in 1957, it was the fourth high school he had attended in as many years. Undeterred by his nomadic childhood, he entered the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.
As fate would have it, the summer after she graduated from college, Reggie moved to Annapolis to begin her teaching career. Six months later, on a cold January evening, she was at a pub with some friends when our favorite Naval Academy midshipman attempted to charm her by playfully commenting on her “old, raggedy tennis shoes.” Very smooth. Though she insisted to her friends afterward that she absolutely, positively did not like “that Phil Harrington,” those friends never let her forget that she kept dragging them back to that same little pub for weeks.
By February, Phil and Reggie were “drinking buds” (words engraved on the charm he gave her because, you know, friends always give other friends mementos made of sterling silver). A month later, they started dating, and on June 6, 1962, hours after he graduated from the Naval Academy, they became husband and wife.
Their first stop was Athens, Georgia, (or, as Reggie presumably said, “Georgia?!”) for training at the Naval Supply Corps School. Six months later with a baby on the way, they packed up the car for a cross-country trip that was supposed to take them from Athens to Seattle for a visit with Phil’s family, and then down to San Diego where he would report to his first duty station. But the pregnancy began to falter, and after a visit to the doctor, Reggie found herself standing in her in-law’s Seattle driveway, waving goodbye to her husband as he drove on to San Diego without her.
Their first daughter, Tracy, was born six weeks early – tiny and fragile. Phil’s family showered Reggie with kindness, and she tried to make do – tried to shoulder her newborn daughter’s hospitalization and missing Phil . . . missing him. She tried and tried, and she kept on trying until finally she suffered a small mental collapse, and the only thing she would say was that she needed to get to him.
Phil took emergency leave and drove 20 hours straight to be with her.
Another daughter, Kelly, arrived in 1965, just a few months before Phil left to fight in Vietnam. When he came home safe and sound 13 months later, they counted their blessings. Since then, nothing and no one has been able to keep them apart.
Over the years there were promotions and duty stations; new homes, old dogs, and lost hamsters; softball games and school plays . . . and cancer . . . and scattering Tracy’s ashes on a mountainside days after her eighteenth birthday.
They held on to one another for dear life in the wake of that loss – their hearts shattered; their souls bound even more closely together.
Phil retired from the Navy with the rank of Captain, having earned numerous medals and awards including the Legion of Merit, two Meritorious Service Medals, a Joint Service Commendation Medal, Navy Commendation Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, Navy Unit Commendation, the Navy Meritorious Unit Commendation, two National Defense Service Medals, and the Republic of Vietnam Gallantry Cross with Palm Unit Citation, among others. He graduated from George Mason University School of Law the same year he retired from the Navy and went on to enjoy a second career as an attorney.
While Reggie’s accolades were less formal, she was a gifted elementary and middle-school teacher. In her classrooms, students knew that they mattered. She had a knack for unlocking their learning potential and the willingness to use whatever time was needed to find the key. Thus, despite the challenges many of her students faced, Reggie never doubted their ability to succeed. No one cheered louder than she did as she watched them soar. Throughout her career, Reggie received cards and letters from former students telling her how much she had meant to them and how deeply the love and commitment she had shown to them in the classroom had impacted their lives. One group of students still meets from time to time in San Diego – they call themselves “Reggie’s kids,” and they continue to reflect on the example she set as they move through the ups and downs of their lives.
Finally came retirement followed by a move to North Carolina where they spent 20 wonderful years together enjoying the company of dear friends, endless rounds of golf, and innumerable, joy-filled visits with their daughter and her family.
When Reggie began to succumb to Alzheimer’s, Phil cared for her at home for as long as he could. When he could no longer care for her safely at home, he and his daughter found a beautiful memory care facility close by. He quickly became a fixture there, visiting her almost every day for hours at a time. At home, Phil was showered with love and visits and telephone calls from his daughter and grandchildren – each of whom he adored and who adored him– and it helped immensely. But his daughter could see the loneliness that lived in him.
Late in the evening on July 28, 2024, Phil finished a call with one of his grandsons and, at some point not long after, suffered a brain injury. Reggie suffered a brain injury the next morning. Four weeks and approximately three miracles later, they lay side-by-side in their hospice beds, his hand holding hers.
Reggie passed away on August 24, 2024, with Phil in the bed beside her and the voices of her daughter and her grandchildren joyfully debating whether, despite her profound love for their grandfather, her greatest love of all might actually have been ice cream!
Phil followed her less than 24 hours later, wrapped in his daughter’s embrace.
During the last lucid decades of their marriage, Reggie would sometimes startle awake at night, shaken by dreams of the day when one of them remained tethered to the earth after the other had passed into eternity, and the thought of it would nearly break her in two.
That day finally came. But to those who knew them best, it’s pretty clear that after she passed and after embracing her first-born daughter, Reggie made a “not if I have anything to say about it” move and gently traced her way back to Phil’s hospice bed, where their surviving daughter delivered him into her arms knowing that, of all the possible places in this universe, the one place her beloved parents most wanted to be was together.
Phil and Reggie are survived by their daughter Kelly (husband, Fred Johnson), and their grandchildren Phillip, Daelan, Ellery, and Parker. Phil is survived by his brothers Pat, Terry, and Mike, and Reggie is survived by her brother Douglas “Red” Howell, Jr. Together, they are survived by a host of nieces and nephews. No list of loved ones would be complete without Phil and Reggie’s step-grandsons, Cole and Connor, their wives Krystle and Chaney, and their children, Byron, Cooper, and Callen.
A Celebration of Life will be held on Saturday, October 19th at 1:30 p.m. at the Ocean Ridge Plantation Club, 53 Ocean Ridge Pkwy SW, Ocean Isle Beach, NC 28469.
