Phillip Allen Urion OBITUARY

Phillip Allen Urion OBITUARY

Phillip Allen Urion, age 99, died peacefully in his sleep after a brief illness on 8 May 2026 in Fort Myers, Florida at age 99.

Phill was born in Evanston, Illinois on 26 April 1927, to Henry Kimball Urion and Katharine Paul Urion. His mother died when he was three years old. For the next several years he lived with first with his grandmothers and then with the widow of one of his father’s law partners. When his father remarried, he joined a blended family that included his older brothers Paul Bachellor Batcheller Urion and henry Henry Kimball Urion, Jr., as well as stepbrothers James and Philip (Tom) Goetz and stepsister Dorothy. He lived in Harrison, NY until attending Vermont Academy with Tom.

After graduation from Vermont Academy in 1944, where he was valedictorian of his class, he enlisted in the U S Navy; he was discharged in 1946. He then enrolled in Northwestern University, where he received his Batchelor’s and Master’s degrees, the latter from the Medill School of Journalism.

He married Lenore (Bril) Barrow, and moved to Cincinnati, where he was editor of Procter and Gamble’s internal publication, Moonbeams. Their first child, David Kimball, was born in Cincinnati. The couple subsequently moved to the Chicago area, where he was editor for several industrial trade publications. Their daughter (Mary) Clare was born shortly after this move.

He left journalism to join Booz, Allen and Hamilton management consultants as part of their communications counsel team. He then left that firm to form his own company, The P.A. Urion

Firm, whose clients were primarily service-related. Among his favorite clients were Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, Kentucky and the Little Sisters of the Poor in Chicago.

Bril died of complications of breast cancer in 1987.

He then married Jan Hoyerman, whose first husband had died six months before Bril; they established a summer residence in Falmouth, to which they later retired. Jan had four children from her first marriage (Janice, Kris, Pam, and William). Phill and Jan embraced the roles of grandparents as their six shared children had children of their own. They divided time between Falmouth and Sanibel Island, Florida.

Jan died of complications of breast cancer.

Phill spent increasing amounts of time in Florida, and eventually became a year-round resident.

He married a third time, to Stella Farwell. They traveled extensively, and had Captiva Island as their base for years.

Stella died of ovarian cancer, and Phil moved back to Sanibel Island.

He was an avid jazz musician and practiced piano and French horn until a few weeks before his death. He was an excellent photographer. He learned to cook after his first wife’s death and embraced this with the same avidity that he did with other passions. He hosted Umbrian feasts at his home in Captiva. He attended the Casa Polegri Cooking School in Orvieto, as well as taking tutorials from Queenie, a local legend, on Captiva.

He was a devoted member of the University Club in Chicago and served as the head of the club’s wine selection committee and on its Board of Directors.

He traveled extensively over all his married lives, visiting 37 countries on five continents, including Antarctica.

One day in the hospital after a heart valve replacement, while going through his usual morning routine of solving the Wall Street Journal crossword puzzle in ink, he looked up, suddenly pained. He was asked if everything was all right. He said, “Do you ever think Zora Neale Hurston will regain her literary reputation?”

In addition to his three wives, he was pre-deceased by all his siblings and his grandson Ian Kemper. He is survived by his son David Urion (Deborah Choate), and their children Kara and Rufus (Maya Harakawa); daughter Clare and her daughter Katharine (Katie) (Michael Murphy) and great-grandchildren Emily and Sean and Clare’s son Phillip (Aliyah Domash) and great-grandchild Miriam;

Stepdaughter Janice Dorfman; Stepdaughter Kris Nuttle and her children Kirsten and Lindsey (Paul) and Lindsey’s children Elijah and Wren; Stepdaughter Pam Kemper (Jerry) and her

children Peter and Brooke; Stepson William (Kit) and their daughter Lauren (Luca); stepdaughter Fritz Johnson and stepson Richard “Trey” Johnson, brother- and sister-in-law Fred and Martha Levert, and sister-in-law Lynne White.

A memorial service will be held this fall at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, Sanibel, Florida. Interment will be private. Donations can be made in his honor to either the Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation or the J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge.