Phillips Brown

TRAVERS CITY, Mich. -- Phillips Hamlin Brown, 100, who lived for 54 years in Cape Girardeau, died Monday night, Feb. 4, 2019, in Traverse City.

He was the father of Traverse City residents Fleda Brown and Melinda "Millie" Putz, and of Michelle "Missy" Griggs of Houston. A profoundly disabled son, Mark Stephen, died in 1975. He had six grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

Phillips was born April 29, 1918, to the distinguished economist Harry Gunnison Brown and his wife, Fleda Phillips Brown, in Columbia, Missouri. That same year, his parents bought a cottage on Intermediate Lake in Antrim County, Michigan, where he spent his summers. That cottage remains in the family today.

On Jan. 25, 1942, Phillips literally married the girl next door, Mable Francis Simpich, known to family and friends as Tancy. After a short honeymoon at Niagara Falls, they settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for him to finish his Master of Business Administration at Harvard. After finishing his degree, he was deployed by the U.S. Army to the Quartermaster Training Center at Camp Lee, Virginia. He served from 1944 to 1946, mostly in the South Pacific.

Following his discharge, he taught briefly at Middlebury College, Vermont, and at the University of Akron, Ohio, before returning to Columbia to complete coursework for a doctorate in economics at the University of Missouri. He stopped short of completing that degree, however, preferring teaching and building boats to further academic study.

He taught at the University of Arkansas for eight years, during which time he gained a reputation for riding his bicycle to school before anyone did such a thing. He was asked to hide the bike in the bushes when he parked it.

In 1961, he accepted an appointment at Southeast Missouri State University, where he spent the remainder of his teaching career. He retired as professor emeritus in 1986. He was famous for riding his bike to school and all over town, tie flapping in the breeze. He was a founding member of the Velo Girardeau Bike Club. He won the award as the oldest member to complete the 100-mile "Century Ride" for the last time when he was 80. He won the award so many times the club named it after him.

He was equally famous for his sailboats, designing and building five in his lifetime. His students started a rumor "P. Brown," as he was fondly called, had built such a big boat in his basement he couldn't get it out. Not true, but he did build one so big he didn't think he could get it to Michigan, so he sailed it for years on nearby Kentucky Lake.

Phillips and Tancy never left their disabled son, Mark, out of anything. They took him to the lake; they cared for him together at home until the last three years of his life, when he needed more care than they could give.

When Tancy died in 1996, Phillips began his 20-year association with the Cape Girardeau Senior Center. He delivered meals every single day, often to recipients much younger than he. At the center, he put the lunch menu up daily and was responsible for taking deposits to the bank. The last letter he ever wrote was to the Cape Senior Center staff.

In 2015, when an unrepairable aneurysm required the amputation of one leg, his daughters moved Phillips to Traverse City, which turned out to be the beginning of another career. Always a great lover of poetry (he belonged to a poetry recitation group at Hickman High in Columbia), he was asked to read poetry to the residents of his assisted living cottage. He would often recite instead of read. Until his death, he still knew "Jabberwocky," large portions of the folk ballad "Abdul Abulbul Amir," "The Highwayman" and many other poems. He would alternate his readings with songs, often singing from memory. He would type long lists of the poems he planned to use for the next Wednesday's "Poetry with Phillips." A manual typewriter was his lifelong companion, although he had learned to use a iPad to some degree. He liked to type out his opinions on the economy, his quarrels with Einstein and religion, as well as long, single-spaced letters to anyone who wanted to write to him.

The family will gather at its cottage on Intermediate Lake in Michigan this summer for a memorial service.

Donations in his honor may be made to the Cape Girardeau Senior Center, www.capeseniorcenter.org.

The family is being cared for and served by the Reynolds Jonkhoff Funeral Home.