Deborah Phinney

Deborah "Debby" Phinney

July 4, 1934 – April 13, 2026

Deborah "Debby" Cushing Phinney was born on the Fourth of July, 1934, to Anita and Henry Stanley Cushing. She passed away on April 13, 2026, at the age of 91. Debby created joy and a sense of community throughout her life – with her family and grandchildren, with all the schoolchildren she reached over her 20-year music teaching career, and by creating and producing the “Bolton Hill Review” musicals that featured neighborhood adults and children all singing and dancing together to her original songs.

Raised in Collingswood, New Jersey, and later Ellicott City, Maryland, Debby showed an early gift for music, taking piano lessons at the Peabody Preparatory School and going on to study at Miami University in Ohio, where she wrote songs for an original student musical, sang in Choral Union, and contributed to the campus humor magazine, graduating in 1956. She later returned to Peabody, earning a second bachelor's degree in Music in 1972 and a master's degree from Towson State in music education.

Debby met her husband Ralph on a boating adventure, dated in Baltimore and New York City, and were married in September 1961. Early in their marriage, they moved to the brick row house on West Lanvale Street where they lived for 55 years and raised their two children – Susan and Mike. The family spent all their summers together aboard their Tartan-27 sailboat, the Ragtime, exploring creeks, shores and little towns up and down the Chesapeake Bay.

As a music teacher, Debby combined her passions for music and creating community. For two decades, Debby taught music at both elementary and high school levels in the Anne Arundel County school system and at Archbishop Keough High School. She didn't just teach music —she wrote original music and staged creative and high-energy musical productions with her students each year.  She was also one of the founding teachers of the Midtown Academy and wrote the school song.

Debby's gift for bringing people together and her creative energy found full expression in the Bolton Hill neighborhood of Baltimore where, throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, she created and produced the annual Bolton Hill Review. For these community productions (including at the Baltimore City Fair), she wrote and directed new songs and dances each year, including performing solos herself. Her original songs — including beloved numbers such as "The Parking Waltz," "The American Way," "Baltimore Blues," “Buzz Berg (the Bouncing Ball),” “(They Called It) The Gin Belt,” and the "Ecumenical Waltz" — were funny, clever, and catchy. Neighbors young and old would sing and dance together. At a time of political divisions, Debby believed and showed how music, humor, and creating a performance could bring people together through a joyous community project.

Debby was committed to community in other parts of her life. She was a lifelong member of Memorial Episcopal Church on Bolton Street, where she played piano for the 9:00 AM experimental Eucharist, wrote madrigal songs for and directed the annual Advent Brunch Musicale, and where she and her husband Ralph helped organize monthly "Happy Hours" that continued for almost fifty years. She also sang every week in the Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church Choir. Debby and Ralph were founding members of the Fells Point Yacht Club, including both acting as Commodores, and these friendships and boating raft-up parties became a central community in their lives. She loved swimming and was a founding member of the Bolton Hill Swim and Tennis Club, and also of Baltimore’s New Democratic Club. For years she helped organize the "Lollipop Lane" neighborhood cocktail gatherings (in the alley that had been renamed in honor of the “Lollipop Lady,” who was also featured in one of Debby’s Bolton Hill Review songs), and she could be seen hand-delivering invitations throughout the Bolton Hill streets.

Debby was a constant presence in the lives of her grandchildren Anita and Ava, flying cross-country to California to visit them three or four times a year. She loved walking the girls to school, celebrating holidays and milestones together, and playing the piano at home and at their school events.

She is survived by her children Mike (and Stacey) Phinney and Susan Phinney (and Jim) Silver, her grandchildren Anita (and Liron) Shlesinger and Ava Silver, her sister Jane Crumlish, her broader family in Massachusetts and New York, and by the many neighbors, students, and community of friends whose lives she made larger, warmer, and more musical for having known her.

A memorial service will be held on Saturday, May 30, 2026 at 1:00 p.m. at Memorial Episcopal Church on Bolton Street in Baltimore.

See Gallery below for additional photos.