Phoebe Follmer Bacon

Towson, MD - Phoebe Follmer Bacon passed away on January 15, 2025, a month before turning 102. The only child of Malcolm Murray and Phoebe Grace (Godcharles) Follmer, Phoebe was born at home in Milton, PA in 1923 during the Depression. A graduate of Bucknell University with a BA in sociology and psychology, she earned her master’s degree in student personnel administration at Columbia Teachers’ College. She went on to be hired, in 1949 at the age of 26, as Dean of Women at Dickinson College where she met John Foster Bacon who was working in the College’s Development Office. 

After a brief courtship, they were married on November 11, 1950 just as John, or “Ham” as he was always called, returned to active duty in the US Navy. Phoebe had grown up in a small town five miles from where she attended college, but now she found herself headed to San Diego and then on to Guam for two years. Their first daughter Phoebe was born on Guam, their second, Deborah in Philadelphia, and Thomas, Susan, and Laurie were born in DC.

The early years of air travel coincided with the growth of her family, and she navigated international travel with diapers, bottles, and multiple stops en route to a destination. When her husband joined USAID, the family - consisting of three daughters under the age of seven - was posted to Baghdad in 1958. When the July revolution broke out, she and her daughters were evacuated from Mosul, where they had gone to escape the summer heat, to Rome with other American wives and children. She was a semi-single parent for the next 11 months with periodic visits from her husband who continued to work in Baghdad. After a brief period back in the States, the family moved to Dar es Salaam, Tanganyika with four daughters (one under 6 months old), where she participated in celebrating the independence of Tanzania from the United Kingdom in 1961. Following another year in Monrovia, Liberia, the family returned to Maryland, where they settled on a farm that had been in the Bacon family for 200 years. 

Long a trained singer, Phoebe joined the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, continued to be a loyal member of her college sorority, Pi Beta Phi, and drove her children to play rehearsals, music lessons, and Park School. Once the youngest was in school, she returned to work at Goucher College in the health office with Dr. Annie Bestebreutje, and then at St. Paul’s School for Boys. Travel remained important, and she visited friends in Wales, Cornwall, and India, while London was a favorite spot visited often with her husband. At the age of 90 she finally visited Ireland with two of her daughters, and delighted in flirting with local police officers at the tearoom on Inishmore.

She loved choral music, puzzles, word games, clothes shopping, the Democratic party, historical and romance novels, advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, men, her family, and her daughters’ friends. She strongly disliked hymns that “dragged”, being late, the 45th/47th president, missing her weekly hair appointment, and going out without her lipstick.

She was predeceased by her son Thomas Follmer Bacon, her daughter Susan “Suzy” Dosh Bacon, and her husband. It was Suzy’s death from breast cancer that prompted Phoebe to get a peacock tattooed on her ankle at the age of 84. She delighted in showing it off, including to the police officers on the scene when she was once rear-ended at a traffic light. Phoebe was a loyal member of Trinity Episcopal Church in Towson where she worked endless hours at the Surprise Shop, a store where items could be recycled with the proceeds supporting charitable work. 

She is survived by her three daughters, Phoebe Bacon, Deborah Nelson, Laurie Bacon, four grandchildren, Jack Nelson (Ben Murray), Alice Sandzen (Sig), William Meister, Sami Meister, two great-grandchildren Foster Sandzen and Sylven Sandzen, and her nephew Don Eunson, Jr (Douglas Evans).

A celebration of life will be scheduled early in the summer at Trinity Episcopal Church. In lieu of flowers, donations may be given in Phoebe F. Bacon's memory to World Central Kitchen (wck.org) or the Handel Choir of Baltimore (handelchoir.org).