Phyllis C. Reinecke, church worker and missionary, dies

Phyllis C. Reinecke, who assisted her husband, who pastored Sapphire Family Church in Oella, died March 24 of complications from pneumonia at a daughter’s Marriottsville home. The former Catonsville resident was 88.

The former Phyllis Ann Caughy, daughter of Patrick Caughy, an American Can Co. night watchman, and his wife, Anna Starkey Caughy, a homemaker, was born in Baltimore and raised in Irvington.

Raised a Roman Catholic, Mrs. Reinecke attended St. Joseph Monastery School, and after graduating from a two-year business school, worked before her marriage for Westinghouse Electric Corp., which at the time, was on Wilkens Avenue.

In 1951, she married , Thomas C. Reinecke, a former dry cleaner, who later earned a divinity degree and founded the Sapphire Family Church in Oella in 1999.

[ Charles L. Wagandt II, who led the restoration of Oella, dies ]

After selling the business in 1984, the couple moved to Bradenton, Florida, where her husband completed his pastoral training at Christian Retreat. From 1988 to 1991, he was pastor of a small Christian fellowship community church in Palmetto, Florida.

That same year, Mrs. Reinecke, after completing a 90-day course at the Institute of Ministry in Bradenton, was ordained an able minister.

She and her husband became missionaries and visited Honduras numerous times, as well as India, Russia, Ukraine, Kenya and Uganda, and from 1994 to 1996, returned to Florida, where they conducted ministries in senior citizen homes.

In 1996, she and her husband moved back to Catonsville, where he established the School of the Holy Spirit, a Christian training school, at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Catonsville, which he operated for a decade.

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Dr. Vincent L. Gott was a retired Johns Hopkins chief of cardiac surgery and a heart pioneer. (Handout / HANDOUT)

From 1996 to 2006, Mrs. Reinecke ministered the Restoring the Foundations counseling program.

Her husband died in 2019.

Mrs. Reinecke enjoyed Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s and Easter holidays, family members said. She was also a bird-watcher and a movie fan, and was especially fond of Elvis Presley films.

Funeral services were March 27 at the Haight Funeral Home in Sykesville.

She is survived by two sons, Timothy Reinecke of Catonsville and Thomas C. Reinecke Jr. of Knoxville, Tennessee; three daughters, Tracey Reinecke-Kashima of Marriottsville, Teresa McDade of Catonsville and Deborah Taylor of Littlestown, Pennsylvania; a sister, Joan O’Connor of Baltimore; 16 grandchildren; and 12 great-grandchildren.