Farewell, Sid Phillips

My father-in-law built a house and a home. Each stood time's test.

Sid Phillips, 1926-2024, with daughters Kerry and Janis. May 28, 2023

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In 1951, Sid Phillips commenced to building his own house. He hired a company to pour the foundation. He did the rest, mostly on his own, after working in the Jones and Laughlin steel mill all day.

It took him two years, day-after-weekend-day and workshift night. Dawn to sunset. Jean, his wife, meticulously tracked every hammered nail and turned screw. It was a Sears Catalog home, single story with a full basement, two bedrooms, one bath, a fireplace. An apple tree in the side yard.

Sid and Jean lived in the house for 63 years, until moving to Milford in 2014. When they sold it, it looked better than the day it was born.

This was what we did then. Self-reliant, persistent, bed-rocked by a belief in the verities of hard work and in an America that cleaved a pure future. We believed so much in our hopes, we not only lived them, we built them. Literally brick by brick.

Sid was the American Dream. He saw its possibilities and seized its days.

After serving in the Army Air Corps in Africa in the waning days of World War II, he came home to Aliquippa, PA, and got on with it. This, too, is what we used to do.

House as metaphor: Life well-constructed from the ground up. A home, filled soon enough with two daughters, Janis and Kerry who, raised by Sid and Jean, would never spend a day unloved. Confident, strong women, owing to the examples set by their parents.

I think of the house now that Sid has passed at the age of 98. I imagine the impossible enormity of the act of construction. I see the ingenuity and the problem-solving and the mental acuity required. Mostly, though, I see what I can’t see, which is. . .

The absolute faith in a better future it must have taken to put hammer to nail, day after day. The house defined him, in a way nothing else would.

Sid was a live-r of life. The world never stopped interesting him. Until a few months ago, he was doing chair yoga and listening to guest speakers discuss the issues of the day, at the senior living facility where he lived.

Sid lived until 98 because he had good genes. But also because he never gave into his age. Quoting Satchel Paige: How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?

Sid never allowed life to happen to him. Sid happened to life.

This past summer, Sid was honored at Mission Barbecue in Mason, for being a World War II vet. They treated him to lunch, they introduced him to the customers, who applauded. There’s now a picture of Sid in his Army uniform, circa 1945, hanging from a wall at Mission.

In late August, Sid was invited to Lunken Field, where the last fully functioning B-17 bomber would make a landing. Sid was a flight engineer on a B-17. The crew helped him into the belly of the plane and up into the cockpit. He signed his name to the wall of the big aircraft.

5th Air Force 25 missions

Europe & N. Africa

S.W.P.

Sidney W. Phillips

He was the proverbial “good man’’ referenced in the WW II movie, Saving Private Ryan. You recall the scene: Half a century later, the elderly soldier returns to the cemetery atop the beach in Normandy, where too many of his comrades had died in the selfless act of saving liberty.

He approaches the gravestone of Sgt. John Miller, who died saving Ryan. Ryan asks his wife, “Have I been a good man?’’

Sid built his own house, to his specifications. He lived in it for 63 years. It was a good house. It was a better home. The good man is on to better places now. Godspeed.

Now, then. . .

BENGALS CATCH A BREAK. . . From The Athletic:

Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott will undergo season-ending surgery on his partially torn hamstring, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Tuesday on 105.3 The Fan. The surgery will take place Wednesday in New York, Jones said.

Prescott suffered the injury in the Cowboys’ Week 9 loss to the Atlanta Falcons. With Prescott out, the Cowboys will continue to use (Cooper) Rush as their starter and (Trey) Lance as their backup.

TML Scheduling Maxim: It’s not whom you play that matters most. It’s when you play them. When the slate came out last spring, we saw At Dallas In December and said, Uh-oh. Now, that game likely will be flexed out of its Monday night assignment.

The Cowboys are a wreck, the Bengals are teetering.

Howevuh. . .

When you have five toes out the postseason door, Christmas looks like Cooper Rush.

The Men haven’t quite defended a horde of Tom Bradys this fall. The Who’s Not Who: Brissett, Dalton, Daniel Jones, Gardner Minshew, not to mention relief pitchers Dorian Thompson-Robinson and Desmond Ridder.

To be fair, they have faced Hurts, Mahomes, Jayden Daniels and Lamar, twice. They still have Justin Herbert this week, and Russell Wilson twice. But they also still have Tennessee on the remaining schedule. Who’s the Titans quarterback? Anybody?

Will Levis. While Levis was out, Mason Rudolph was the guy. He’s a just a Guy, as is Jameis Winston, the QB the Browns will offer when they play the Men next month.

THING THAT MAKES ME SAY, HUH? Jillian The Magnificent takes four buses a day, to negotiate her way from her apartment in Symmes Twp to her job in Bellevue, KY, where she works at The Party Source. That requires a monthly bus pass. People with disabilities are eligible for a discounted Metro fare card.

So far, so keen.

Problem is, every four years, to retain her discount, Jillian has to prove she still has a disability. Well, OK. But her disability is Down syndrome.

To get a new pass, we need to provide written notification from two doctors that, yes indeed-y, Jillian D. Mavriplis still has Down syndrome.

What F——-’ Chisholm Trail?

Maybe there’s something going on I don’t know about. But as far as I can tell, no human being born with Down syndrome has ever magically not had Down syndrome. And yet here we are, doctors notes in hand.

I don’t dislike Metro. It has been a wonderful way for Jillian to get around, especially to work. But, c’mon, man.

AND FINALLY. . . as part of my effort to cleanse myself of presidential politics, I have stopped listening to pods and watching or reading any news. It’s worked so far. It feels like bathing.

Next step is ridding myself of the parasite known as social media. Ditching Twitter became easy once Musk bought it. Losing Facebook is a tougher task, but since Dark Tuesday, I’ve decided fighting the good fight on social media is a bad idea, sanity-wise. So, Mobsters. . .

Have you killed the social media parasite? How did it/does it feel? You recommend it?

TUNE O’ THE DAY. . . I associate certain tunes/albums with definite points in my life. You?

Elton John provided the soundtrack of my high school years. Elton simply ruled. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was on every cassette and 8-track tape player in every Pontiac Trans Am at Winston Churchill High School.

My broken heart always found refuge in Jim Croce’s three albums.

“We were only kids, but then, I never heard it said that kids can’t fall in love and feel the same. . .’’

The Nighthawks take me back to the joy of my Bethesda youth. And so on.

But my college years would not have existed without the Boz Scaggs masterpiece, Silk Degrees. My sophomore year, every frat house party had to include “Georgia’’ and/or “We’re All Alone’’ on its playlist. Every guy in every dorm room recognized the tune “Lido’’.

This remains my favorite cut from that fabulous album.