Flagpole honoree ‘just a regular person’
Reader Terry Hontz recently asked about the flagpole and little monument in the small grassy area on the east side of the Public Safety Building. The plaque notes that they honor John David Phillips, and that they were dedicated Dec. 7, 1973.
It shouldn’t be too hard to track that down. Or so it would seem.
A July 15, 1970, funeral notice for John D. Phillips noted that he served in the military during World War II, and a Dec. 5, 1973, newspaper article announced the upcoming flagpole dedication.
There the trail of information pretty much stops. No information available from the usual research sites. No information about Phillips or the memorial from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, from Spokane County Veterans Services, from Spokane police or sheriff sources, from the county facilities department or from local military history buffs – though all were interested and helpful in providing phone numbers for someone else who just might know.
Since the 37-year-old funeral notice listed survivors, it was off to the phone book to make calls to lots of people with the right name – after all, Phillips is a pretty common name – but not the right lineage. Until the phone call to the fourth John Phillips on my list, who turned out to be John D. Phillips Jr., son of the man honored at the Public Safety Building.
He’s not quite sure how his father got to be honored, except he thinks it’s because of his mother – Elsie Phillips, who was the elevator operator in the building until she retired in the late 1970s. “Mom was real bubbly and well-liked,” Phillips Jr. recalled. “She told us a flagpole was being put up, and people were asking who it should be dedicated to. Apparently, she said that Dad, who had died a few years earlier, would be as good as anyone else. And that’s how it happened, I think.”
John D. Phillips Sr. had served in the Army during World War II, the latter years as a member of the Presidential Honor Guard. After the war, he was with the old 4th Infantry stationed at Fort Wright, where he served as a military policeman.
After he left the military in the late 1940s, he returned to railroading, just like his father before him. And three of his own sons would follow him into careers with the railroad. He and Elsie raised eight children in Spokane, five of whom survive and live in Spokane. In addition to John Jr., there’s Valerie Hall and Lyle, Richard and Merilee Phillips. Elsie died in the late 1990s.
To the best of his knowledge, the senior Phillips didn’t do anything particularly heroic or notable during his military service, his son said. “He was a quiet-spoken man, just a regular person.”
“He was just a working man who served his country,” daughter Valerie Hall said.
But maybe that makes him, and all like him, hero enough to be recognized.