Phyllis Levine, 85: Opened Virginia town’s first mental health clinic

When Phyllis Levine saw a need in a small western Virginia community, she put her professional expertise to work to provide for people she didn’t know. But that is just who she was, her sons said.

“She was a firecracker and full of energy,” said her son Jim Levine of Atlanta.

A trained social worker and psychologist, Phyllis Levine helped the town of Covington, Va., open its first mental health clinic. This was in the 1960s when mental health issues were not often spoken about openly, Levine said of his mother’s work.

“She felt people should be able to get help in this small community, where there was no mental health infrastructure at all,” he said. “She sensed it was needed.”

When the Levine family moved to the Atlanta area in 1978, she jumped into her new community with just as much gusto, said her other son, Bill Levine of Wilmington, Del.

“We moved a lot because dad got transferred from one place to another,” he said. “But when that happened, it came down to her to set up the social network for the family.”

“And she did not hesitate to do that, ever,” Jim Levine added.

Phyllis Levine of Atlanta died Saturday from complications of pancreatic cancer and congestive heart failure. She was 85.

A graveside service is planned for 11 a.m. Tuesday at Arlington Memorial Park, Sandy Springs. Dressler’s Jewish Funeral Care is in charge of arrangements.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Levine graduated from the University of Michigan in 1948 and later earned a master’s degree in psychology from Case Western University.

In 1953, she married Max Levine, who died in 1988 in their 35th year of marriage.

In the late 1970s, when the Levines moved south to Atlanta, Phyllis Levine connected with Jewish family services to do social work.

Education, specifically religious education, was extremely important to Levine, her sons said.

“We’d go on fabulous vacations, but they almost always had an educational component to them,” Jim Levine said. “And when we lived in Virginia, she’d drive us 60 miles each way so we could go to Sunday school. That’s how important it was to her.”

She was also a longtime member of Temple Emanu-El in Dunwoody, where she once served as a vice president and was a member of the choir beyond her 80th birthday, Jim Levine said.

Bill Levine said along with her firm stance on education and religion, his mother also believed strongly in equal rights.

“She lived it, and she taught it to her kids,” he said. “We had what I call life lessons, where we as boys learned to cook and sew (on) a button. She’d say, ‘It was different for your father, but now is a different time,’ and she believed that, and I took that as a real positive.”