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She took up ballroom dancing. Played bridge. Tended to her roses.

Phillips, who had no biological children, died there in August 2024 at the age of 100. She remembered Well-Spring in her will, leaving the retirement community $24 million. “I had to count the commas,” K. Alan Tutterow, co-chief financial officer of Kintura, the parent company of Well-Spring, said of the check.

After meeting with the executor of the will, Tutterow met with his board of directors. “There were a lot of gasps in the room,” Lynn Wooten, the company’s executive vice president of communications, brand strategy and public relations, said.

Phillips didn’t want a building in her name. Not even a statue. She was concerned about the well-being of others. And she made that clear.

The money is only to be used for Well-Spring, and no other entity within the broader Kintura organization may benefit from the gift, Tutterow said.

It costs between $3,000 and $10,000 a month to live at Well-Spring, depending on what kinds of services a person requires.

The money is going into a benevolence fund ensuring that others who live there can live out their days there even if they run out of money. Studies show that as people live longer, they may outlive their assets. Phillips’ money will allow others to stay at Well-Spring even as retirement living turns to assisted living, to skilled nursing or memory care.

“Being fortunate enough to live at Well-Spring does not make any of us immune to the unexpected twists and turns life can offer,” Jean Davison, president of the community’s Residents Association, said in a written statement. “Any one of us could find ourselves in a situation in which this gift would make a tremendous difference in our final years. Florence had the foresight, heart and generosity to understand this, and she created a way to help best ensure all of us — and future residents — are cared for.

For that, the residents of Well-Spring are humbled and grateful.”

It is the biggest gift in Well-Spring’s history, and perhaps to any single retirement community.

Katie Smith Sloan, the president and CEO of LeadingAge, a community of over 5,400 nonprofit aging service providers, said that to her knowledge no single-site life plan community in the country has ever received a bequest on this scale.

No one knew Phillips was thinking that big.

Actually, there’s a lot that’s unknown about Phillips.

As a younger woman, Phillips had briefly been an attorney before women lawyers were commonplace in courtrooms.

She was sociable, stylish and had spent a good deal of her life at Well-Spring, where until her later years she enjoyed dining out on campus.

A longtime resident of Greensboro, she attended Holy Trinity Episcopal Church.

She had been married twice.

The handful of people who remember her say she also loved children and young people.

Although she once paid for an instructor to come to the campus to help others learn ballroom dancing, no one including Tutterow knew just what she had in her portfolio. But her bequest lives on through the endowment.

“I think we are really honoring her intentions,” Tutterow said.