Mavis Phillips Barrett

Mavis Barrett, 94, died peacefully at her Charleston residence June 11, 2019.

Mavis Phillips Barrett, who was a resident of Charleston on and off for 75 years, was born in Emerson, Arkansas, on May 26, 1925, the third of four children born to Otis Phillips and Cordie Hartsell Phillips. On December 19, 1944, she married Charlestonian James Lamb Perry, III, who then was in training as a Navy Pilot. Creating their home in Charleston, they were the parents of two daughters, Elizabeth Perry Gourlay and Jane Perry Burden.

After their divorce, Mavis began a writing career, working for the Charleston Evening Post as an Assistant Editor of the women’s pages. She became a feature writer with her own column, PerryScope. A keen observer of life around her, she kept a detailed diary and maintained her interest in writing throughout her life .

On April 25, 1962, she married Robert South Barrett, IV, a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State. The family moved to Paris in 1963, where Bob was Special Assistant to the Ambassador and Mavis continued to send weekly PerryScope articles to the Evening Post, with the logo for her column changed to include a sketch of the Eiffel Tower. While abroad, she wrote about shipboard travel, first impressions, apartment hunting and settling in, Paris Fashion Collections, and the budding career of an emerging band known as The Beatles.

After the Paris assignment, the Barretts were given assignments in various global hotspots, always places in the midst of political upheaval. Mavis accompanied her husband as he served as Consul in Martinique, political officer in war-torn Vietnam, Chargé d’Affaires in Madagascar, and Deputy Chief of Mission in conflict-ravaged Beirut, with a relatively peaceful interim tour at the United Nations in New York, before accepting the post of Ambassador to Djibouti, a country of great strategic importance to the United States. In each new post, Mavis took up her diplomatic entertaining and good works duties with zeal and grace. Upon completion of their ambassadorial duties in Djibouti, the couple retired to Charleston.

Mavis loved the Carolina beaches and walking for miles beside the ocean. Throughout their years abroad, the Barretts maintained a residence at Kiawah, for their annual leave vacations. When they retired they moved into their residence on Zigzag Alley and divided time there with time at their Georgetown residence in Washington. Mavis also fondly recalled the summers she spent in Highlands, N.C., as a young woman and enjoyed it all the more in the last years of her life when she purchased a vacation home there.

Mavis was a past chairperson of the American Foreign Service Women’s Association Writers’ Group, and one of the founders of the Department of State’s Family Liaison Office, which offers assistance to the families of Foreign Service Officers.

After 42 years of marriage, her husband Bob preceded her in death, as did her brother and two sisters. She is survived by her daughters, Elizabeth Gourlay and Jane Burden, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Services will be held at 11:00 AM Tuesday, June 25, 2019, at St. Michael's Church on the corner of Meeting and Broad St.

In lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to St. Michael's Church.