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My friend Bill Phillips was a man who dedicated his life to his family, his community, and his work. Despite working long, hard hours, Phillips always made time for the most important things in life—his sons and his wife. Men like Phillips make a lasting impact on the people around them, and when Bill passed away in a tragic accident in 2010 we all felt the loss.
Football games in America are filled and surrounded with rituals. There can be the tailgate before the game—throngs of people surrounding the stadium with food and drink—the pregame speech from the coach, the run out onto the field, and there is the coin toss. But before the whistle sounds, and the kicker makes the slow loping run to send the ball to the other end of the field, one more tradition must happen. Boys look for their fathers.
It may not be much. A quick glance into the stands, a scan of the rows before turning back to the field, but the question stays the same: Will he be there? Sons want to play beneath the gaze of their father and no matter how much the attention of anyone else—even that smiling young lady—might thrill the heart of a teenager, there is one member of the audience whose attention boys innately crave. But sometimes work runs late and he isn’t sitting there. He may have had “better things” to do. He just couldn’t make it or, sadly, there may be a split that means it’s not the father’s turn to be at the game. And still others have had that primary relationship with their father damaged to such a point that they would cringe to see him anywhere near their lives. It can be sad.
But for Andrew, Colter, and Paul Phillips, they always knew that—barring some type of extraordinary disruption—William (Bill) Phillips Sr. would be sitting up in the stands when they ran out on the field. They loved their father, and he loved supporting them in whatever they were doing.
Competition ran in the Phillipses’ blood, and the boys took a page from their father’s path in life. The six-foot-seven-tall Bill played defensive tackle at Evansville from 1972 to 1976, while his wife Janet swam in college. The boys went to Georgetown Preparatory School in Bethesda, Maryland, and were separated by a few years. Andrew took his place on the offensive line while Colter and Paul lined up as tight ends.
Bill loved his boys and those boys excelled on the field. As each came to his final year, the scholarship offers started coming in. Andrew left first to attend Stanford University. Colter entered the University of Virginia and Paul accepted an offer to play at the University of Indiana.
These boys were no slouches on the field, and their father was no slouch off the field, serving as the legislative director and chief of staff to Alaskan senator Ted Stevens and working as a highly successful attorney and lobbyist. It was the type of job that could make it hard to make it out on Friday nights to the lights of the stadium—but Bill did everything he could to be there each week.
For Bill, football wasn’t just about the score when the referee finally blew his whistle.
“My dad was really a huge fan of what football can do for you in your life, and the life lessons you can learn from playing the game,” said Colter. “He said that if you can be a good football player, not having good skill, but being a good teammate and really learn the game—you can really be successful in life.”
And Bill was so proud of his boys. Even when Andrew was on the West Coast, Bill would do everything in his power to make the games, leaving Colter’s high school games on a Friday night and catching a red-eye flight so as not to miss the college game on Saturday. He made attending his sons’ games a priority, even when it meant moving his work schedule around.
When Colter ran out on the field, he’d go through a routine, running to the bench, saying a prayer, then looking to the stands for his mother and father.
All of the boys knew that football wasn’t just a game; it taught the boys how to live as a man. They were taught to act with courage, conviction, and with clarity of purpose despite any difficulties. They watched their father and they loved him.
He made spending time with each of them a priority, and when Senator Ted Stevens wanted Bill to head to Alaska with him for a salmon fishing trip in August 2010, Bill decided to take his youngest son, thirteen-year-old William Jr. or “Willy” as he was called. It was supposed to be a wonderful adventure for father and son.
But something went wrong and the 1957 De Havilland DHC-3 Otter floatplane they were flying slammed into the side of a mountain in Dillingham, Alaska, with tremendous force, leaving a three-hundred-foot gash in the hillside. Bill died. Senator Stevens and three others were also killed.
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Oil and wreckage caked the slope as cold rain and wind gusted about the wreckage. Willy was injured, trapped in the plane. Three other travelers were still alive, but it was a cold night. A helicopter finally circled overhead, and Willy knew he had to flag it down or more people might not make it. Willy was injured, but he waved at the helicopter and tried to jump out of the crashed plane to get their attention. He broke his leg.
There were no complaints from the thirteen-year-old. Rescuers had seen them, but it would still be a few hours before any help could make it through the treacherous Alaskan countryside to the plane. Willy tended to the other injured survivors in the plane, trying to keep them warm and protected. Two volunteer emergency technicians, a doctor and a nurse, were dropped into the region by plane and hiked the thousand feet up to the wreckage.
The plane was resting on a thirty-degree slope. The doctor and the nurse performed emergency treatment on the wounded, but there was no way for the injured to be extracted until morning.
The survivors were taken to Providence Alaska Medical Center. Willy had cuts across his body and injuries to his hands and legs.
The news of Senator Stevens’s death was a shock, but the news that Bill Phillips’ life had ended spread fast as well.
Susan Christianson, a spokeswoman for the Phillips family, released a statement saying that Bill Phillips “was a man of deep faith who lived for his family, was kind, generous and believed in the goodness of every individual. Bill was a successful entrepreneur and a gifted attorney whose wisdom and insights into life, law and public policy were sought by many.”
Bill was loved by many. The man lived a life that was hard to ignore. A quiet life, marked by integrity and uncluttered by any presumption or affected importance.
On the twentieth of August, a funeral mass was held at Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church in Potomac, Maryland. Hundreds of people paid tribute to the life of Bill Phillips in a two-hour service. The football team from the University of Virginia attended.
Willy stayed quietly in a wheelchair, but each of the other sons spoke.
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They remembered the life of their father as one marked by a commitment to his faith and his family. He was a man with a great love of family, but his love extended outside of his family, even to strangers, and he never looked for thanks or recognition for his actions. He loved Alaska and the wilderness of that state.
The sons were prepared to sit out the 2010 football season, to come home and support their mother. But Janet would have none of that and told the boys that they still needed to “be kids” and that their father would have wanted them to play.
While Bill might have passed and finally been unable to make it to the football games of the boys he loved so much, his spirit lived on after his coffin was lowered into the ground. His was a spirit that gave Willy strength to serve others, even in the horrors of the crash, and a spirit that kept Andrew, Colter, and Paul smiling and able to run onto the field.
For the Phillips family, football wasn’t just a game and when the boys look up into the stands, they will still feel their father watching. And maybe others will be watching, too, for in the funeral program on that August day, the football schedules for the three boys were printed on the back of the program, with an encouragement from Janet to friends and family to attend and stand in for Bill.