This 96-year-old woman still finds purpose in practicing psychiatry in her Illinois home
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. — Three words come to mind when meeting Dr. Phyllis Loeff: stylish, gracious and smart. Loeff, like so many others, gets up early every day to prepare for work. She exercises, gets dressed and dons makeup before seeing patients in the study at her Highland Park home.
At 96, Loeff is a psychiatrist who has been practicing for over 50 years. While working at such an age may seem a feat unto itself for many, Loeff is humble.
“There’s people who have bad things happen … people who get very depressed and can’t find a way out of the depression — these are patients that I have experience of working with and helping,” Loeff said. “There are people who have behavior patterns that they have to understand or find a way of changing because it bothers other people. I help them readjust themselves to an acceptable place in relationship to those who are close to them. There are people who have lost somebody recently, older people, people over 65, I’m sure I have more of those patients than most younger doctors have because they know that I understand that time of life.”
Daily, she can be found in a leather chair surrounded by tomes of her youth and education in her wood-paneled study or at her computer on her sun porch poring over her patient notes, with orchids and greenery at her back and children’s books nearby, which she reads to her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The bespectacled psychiatrist has a calming demeanor and cadence when she speaks, and offers a variety of jams that she makes and bottles herself to houseguests. Cooking is a passion for her; her fudge brownies are her piece de resistance, according to daughter Nanette Allen.
Loeff’s life is...