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Ocean City icon Shirley Phillips, founder of Phillips Seafood, dies on Christmas Day

Liz Holland
The Daily Times

Shirley Flowers Phillips, who with her late husband launched a well-known seafood company, died Christmas Day at her Ocean City home, family members confirmed.

She was 95.

Phillips and her husband, Brice R. Phillips, grew up in the small Dorchester County watermen’s community of Hoopers Island, “where the A.E. Phillips & Son processing plant sourced wild crabs, fish and oysters in season from the Chesapeake Bay,” according to the company website.

Shirley and Brice Phillips are shown in this 2006 file photo. Shirley Phillips died Monday, Dec. 25.

The family started a small market in Ocean City in 1956 to sell their surplus crabs, and it quickly grew into a popular restaurant in the resort town.

“They were a fabulous business team,” said state Sen. Jim Mathias, who is a former Ocean City mayor. “They took an Ocean City company across the state and across the world.”

Today the Phillips Seafood business empire includes more than a dozen restaurants across the East Coast. The original restaurant, on 21st Street, has expanded into Phillips Crab House, a two-story building that seats 1,400 and occupies an entire block.

The Phillips company also offers a line of frozen foods, including crab cakes and crab dip.

Many of the recipes go back several generations and were “passed to our chefs straight from the kitchen of Shirley Phillips,” the company said on its website.

Brice Phillips died in 2011 at the age of 90 in his Ocean City home. He was referred to in interviews as one of the nicest men his friends had ever known. The sentiment was also stated in the late William Donald Schaefer's will. The Baltimore mayor and Maryland governor left Phillips $2,500, and his words about Phillips' kindness was the only personal remembrance of any kind in the will.

The couple was close to Schaefer, who persuaded them to open a restaurant at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in 1980. The business now has restaurants in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as well as Ocean City and Baltimore, plus locations in six airports, two casinos and at the Washington Redskins’ FedEx Field.

The company is now headquartered in Baltimore.

In 1996, Brice and Shirley Phillips were each awarded honorary degrees at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, campus spokesman Bill Robinson said. They were recognized for their support of the university's hospitality and tourism management program as part of the Founders Day convocation that year.

Joe Phillips, one of the couple's eight grandchildren, said his grandmother always put a personal touch in selecting gifts.

"She was such a great grandmother to me and all the grandchildren," he said.

In addition to her grandchildren, she is survived by two sons, Steve Phillips and Jeff Phillips and several great-grandchildren.

A funeral service will be held Saturday.

Twitter: @LizHolland5