Meet the Models, New England: Phyllis Eichhorst
Pamela Joy Kent was a force in her community. Marrying her high school sweetheart, she went on to become a teacher in Newburyport for 28 years. Her sister, Phyllis Eichhorst beams when talking about her saying, “she was larger than life. This was 20 years ago and people still come up to me talking about how amazing she was.”
Pamela’s initial diagnosis came in February 1995, which led to a lumpectomy and subsequent partial mastectomy. When clear margins still weren’t achieved, Pamela went on to have a complete mastectomy. Throughout all of her treatment she worked, educating the school children on cancer with various books & allowing them to partake in her choice of scarf she would wear around her head. Phyllis notes, “she wasn’t only a mother and wife, she was an amazing mentor to other people.” Indeed, when her sister was diagnosed with a brain tumor, Pamela helped care for her two young children, all while in treatment herself. At the hospital, she made it a point to talk to every person she knew to check in how they were feeling: “she never complained. She was always there to help other people. She used to say ‘you’re attitude is 95% of it, but your family pulls you through.”
Pamela went on to have nearly five years cancer free, but the cancer returned in 1999 and she sadly passed in 2002. Phyllis remembers the “temple was crowded with a line out the door, all with people who had something wonderful to say about her.” Pamela’s children, 20 and 24 at the time of her death, now have kids themselves and it’s those memories Phyllis feels most bothered by: “I don’t feel like she ever left me. She is always in my heart and I have tons of pictures of her all around. Her children now having children is what bothers me the most about the cancer- she would would have been an amazing grandmother and she never got to experience that.”
Nonetheless, Phyllis continues to honor her sister in any way she can, now adding runway model to that list: “If I can do anything to honor the positive person she was, I will do it. Everywhere you go, there is a memory of her.”