Marden-born Phillip Williams and wife Phoebe killed in Crete

4:43pm Friday 14th November 2008

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A COUNTY family is mourning the death of a couple in Crete.

Phillip Williams, who was born in Marden, and his wife Phoebe both died instantly in a road crash while they were on their way to work on the Greek island where they lived. Both were aged 55.

The couple had only just returned from Hereford after the wedding of their niece Louise Williams and Christopher Hodgkinson at Hereford Cathedral.

Phillip and Phoebe spent two weeks in the city visiting members of their large family and meeting up with many old friends.

“It was like a large family gathering and we had a wonderful time,” said Phillip’s brother Richard.

“It was terrible to hear the news of their tragic deaths so soon after they returned home.

“It had been such a happy time for us all in Hereford, a place that Phillip still loved so much.”

Phillip and Phoebe’s daughter Sophie, who works in Amsterdam, was with her parents in Hereford but their son Jonathan and grandson Gabriel remained at home in Crete.

“Our hearts go out to their children and we are all in a state of shock,” said Richard.

Phillip and Phoebe were buried together in her home village of Martha in Crete. All of Phillip’s five brothers and sisters attended the funeral.

Phillip was born at Little Paradise in Marden. He went to the village school in Marden and then Bishop of Hereford’s Bluecoat School in Hereford before doing a catering course at Herefordshire College of Technology.

Phillip went to London to work at Northwick Park Hospital, where he met Phoebe, a Greek girl who was working there part time while training to teach English in her own country.

The couple married and moved to Crete where Phillip had a career change, taking up a job as administrator at an American Air Force base. When this closed, he took a similar job at a NATO military base at Souda Bay, where Phoebe also worked.

They were driving to work together when the crash happened.