Evangeline (Eva or Eve) Armstrong Lathrop Phillips was born in Irving, Kansas. She graduated from Blue Rapids, Kansas, High School in 1912 and worked as a clerk in a bank in Kansas City, Missouri in 1920. While working, there was an armed robbery where her supervisor was fatally shot. She was interviewed and her likeness was in several newspapers.

Eva Lathrop married A. G. (Fred) Phillips in 1924. Her daughter, Mary, was born in 1929. Eva Phillips lived in Baxter Springs, Kansas for many years and traveled frequently, living until the age of 102.