Longtime readers will remember a little over a decade ago when I wrote about the passing of my friend Dan Phillips of Oxford.
Dan was a second-generation Mississippi newspaper man and one of the best this state ever produced. Phillips, at the time of his death was the assistant publisher of The Oxford Eagle daily newspaper. Dan died Dec. 14, 2005, at the University of Alabama-Birmingham Hospital following complications from a kidney transplant. He was 47.
Dan Phillips was a past president of the National Newspaper Association, then one of only four Mississippians ever chosen to hold that office. He served seven years on the NNA national board of directors.
Dan served as president of the Mississippi Press Association in 1997-98. He spent a decade on the MPA’s board of directors and also served as president of the organization’s education foundation. As president of the MPA, Dan was instrumental in forming the Mississippi Center for Freedom of Information, headquartered at the Ole Miss Department of Journalism. In 1998, Ole Miss named Phillips was named one of the university’s Top 50 journalism alumni.
Dan was one of my closest friends and as good a man and as good a newspaper man as he was, my late friend always gave credit where credit was due. The sterling newspaper career cut short by Dan Phillips’ untimely death in 2005 would never happened without the example set by his father, longtime Oxford Eagle publisher Jesse Pittman Philips.
Jesse Phillips, 82, died Sunday after a long and difficult illness – one predicated, in truth, from a broken heart that never really healed after enduring his son’s death.
Jesse Phillips was not a tough guy newspaper publisher, although he was one of the last of the “get-dirty” publishers. Jesse Phillips could run the printing equipment in his shop, repair that equipment, and literally publish the newspaper he owned with the family of longtime editor Nina Goolsby. Mr. Phillips and hard work, as they say, were well acquainted.
The signature trait of both Jesse and Dan Phillips is that they were gentlemen – nice guys to a fault. And it wasn’t an act or a strategy, it was who they were.
More than investing in their own business interests, the Phillips family invested in community building in Oxford and at the University of Mississippi. They did their part, more than their part, in civic, charitable and religious pursuits. Both father and son were influential in the Mississippi Press Association where both served as president.
I came to know Dan through my late first wife, Paula, and her brother, Gus Jones. Gus and I were among Dan’s pallbearers more than a decade ago. Dan was a close and loyal friend to Paula during the worst years of her long battle with multiple sclerosis. Dan and Gus were fraternity brothers at Ole Miss.
After so many years of friendship with the Phillips family, I need better than most the devastation that Dan’s death brought to his parents. But the faith and courage that Jesse and Miss Jeanette exhibited in the face of crushing grief over the loss of their son was nothing short of inspirational.
In 2014, the Oxford Eagle was sold to subsidiaries of Boone Newspapers.
When I think of the newspaper industry I joined in the late 1970s, I think of the families who published newspapers in that era. The industry was full of “get-dirty” publishers like Jesse Phillips. People who worked hard and who worked long hours. People who lived and died with the communities they served.
People like Jesse Phillips, the gentleman publisher in Oxford – a great Mississippi newspaper man who left his city far better than he found it.
I suppose I learned more about grace under pressure from Jesse Phillips than any man I’ve ever known. He was unshakeable. He lived his faith every day. And in the darkest hours of his life when Dan died, Jesse Phillips was sustained by that faith. What a legacy.
(Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist. Contact him at sidsalter@sidsalter.com)