Mrs. Elinor Fry Phillips was the founder of the Elinor Fry School of Dance.  She was a Richmond, Virginia native and was educated at what is now St. Catherine’s School and studied dance in New York, Hollywood, London, Paris, Tokyo, Dresden and Mexico City.  She was St. Catherine’s first dance teacher and she started her own dance school on Monument Avenue in 1920.
 
Mrs. Phillips also taught dance with Dance Educators of America and Lucille Stoddard’s Dance Congress in New York and was a member of the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dance.
 
In 1929, she became the first licensed female pilot in Virginia.
 
She organized her first dance revue in 1938 for the benefit of the Virginia Association of Workers for the Blind, a recital attended by the famed Helen Keller, who “saw” the show using the vibration of a tin cup held in her hand.
 
Mrs. Phillips also founded the Concert Ballet of Virginia.  She served on the board of the ballet until her retirement in 1971.