Phil Wilson

Early Biography of Phil

Memories of brother Steve.

This story is about Phil the artist of the family. He was an artist from his teens. He was very quick with a pen. In a Wilson family reunion he entertained his young nieces by asking them what they wanted him to draw. He would sketch something out like a giraffe with a minimum of strokes that were perfect slightly cartoonish renditions. The girls were fascinated.

I first met brother Phil when I was around four. Mom and Dad came home from the hospital with this baby boomer wrapped in a blanket. They were excited about it and tried to get his older brothers excited too, but they were rather indifferent.

Mom constantly corrected us when we said “ain’t.” A neighbor said the word when Phil was a baby sitting in a highchair. To everyone’s surprise Phil piped up, “That’s a grammatical error.” The neighbor thought Phil was brilliant. It most likely was just a conditioned reaction that Mom instilled in him. Other than that I don’t remember Phil at all when he was a baby.

We kids were always coming down with some ailment or another. At around 4 years old, Phil was quite sick, but I didn’t think much of it until Dr Evans came. He was alarmed at Phil’s fever and Mom was quite worried too. He was grave and told Mom to get wet towels which he put on Phil to cut his fever. He also swabbed Phil’s chest with alcohol and gave him a shot. Phil was in a delirium and asked Dr Evans why was that thing hanging from his chin. Dr Evans didn’t even have a beard and asked, “What thing?” Phil said “A hotdog”. Mom got even more worried. I don’t remember anything further about that episode except I heard later that Phil almost died with lobar pneumonia.

When he entered the age of reason his two older brothers teased him frequently. In the neighborhood he was considered one of the little kids and hung out with a different crowd. While his brothers were content in doing secret scientific experiments in the basement, Phil would be outside networking with the little kids. He was very social from day one – maybe 10 years ahead of us. He had a few girl friends. By that I mean friends who were girls. He seemed to feel very comfortable around them while Dave and I were very awkward around the opposite sex and had no idea how to talk to them.

One friend, Eileen Chandler who lived up the street, was about his age and he hung out with her almost daily. I didn’t understand why because she wasn’t interesting in any possible way. Mom was sort of a non-believer, but sent her kids to Sunday school anyway, no doubt hoping it wouldn’t stick. Phil and Eileen would walk to Sunday school together. Dave and I seldom went at that time. When Phil was about 10 he wanted to become a priest and talked about it a lot. Mom was worried. What did she put her kids up to?

Phil also had a friend Ned Bolton. He was an odd sort and frequently carried a stick so he could beat on garbage cans in the alley. I had no idea how Phil thought about his activities with Ned, but Ned and Phil may have appealed to each other in a way that I could not have imagined at that time.

Phil and I were both skinny. Apparently Phil was very sensitive about his weight. I was trying to retrieve something that fell behind a book case, and found a little box there too. I brought it out and asked Mom what it was. Phil immediately let out a groan and Mom was slightly panicked. The box, called “Weight-on” was full of pills. Apparently Mom and Phil were sharing a secret that Phil was trying to put on more weight. I shrugged it off.

In Burt Elementary school the kids had a choice to take “Shop” or Home Economics. Shop was where you learned how to use tools – planes, files, coping saws, and you even learned how a toilet worked. Of course Phil’s older brothers chose to take shop, but Phil chose home economics. He certainly never talked about it to his older brothers, but he did talk a lot about it to Mom, who showed a lot more interest in home economics than shop. I remember Phil authoritatively telling Mom that when cooking with bananas you should use very ripe ones because they added more flavor. Mom said, “Oh, that’s interesting.” He had a different sort of bond with her than her older kids did .

Phil won the spelling bee at Burt school. He was qualified to go to the Detroit city wide spelling bee with local winners from the other grade schools. Mom, and maybe Dad proudly took him and were part of the audience. Phil related that experience years later when he could look back at that with humor. At some point he was given a word that he knew, and started to spell: C, O, O, O … That was wrong and he was buzzed off. What happened was that he looked down in concentration and saw that not only was his fly open, but his white shirt was sticking out of it. For the ever socially conscious Phil, that was devastating.

North of Grand River Ave was the suburb Rosedale. That is where the rich people lived. We lived in Brightmoor, the south side of the tracks, so to speak. At Redford High School Phil hung out with the cool guys and girls and acquired a social mark of esteem by wearing clothes styles that were the fad in Rosedale – a Cardigan sweater over a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up a little past the wrist. He never brought any of those kids to our house. He was understandably somewhat ashamed of Brightmoor. He was still in High School when the family moved to Ferndale, out of the poor Brightmoor social class of shop lifters and thieves.

On his first day at Ferndale High he wore a Cardigan over a white shirt with rolled up sleeves. Everyone stared at his alien attire which was not the trend at Ferndale. After a few days a couple of guys were wearing the same style. After a few weeks, lots of the cool guys were wearing a Cardigan over a white shirt with rolled up sleeves. I remember I was in the living room when Phil had two or three girl friends on the front porch chatting away. How did he meet girls so fast? He was a trend setter and very popular.

Phil got a job going door to door selling Encyclopedia Britannica. It lasted a few months at the most. He later had a job at Ford Motor Company as a quality control inspector. Different shops in the Ford complex would build various parts and Phil’s job was to “buy” the parts. He didn’t say much about it but I knew it was stressful. He told about one shop boss who was loudly arguing with Phil because the parts were out of spec and Phil stood firm and said he couldn’t buy the parts. That episode shook him a bit. He had other odd jobs around that time, but I don’t remember what they were.

While I was going to Grad school at Wayne State University, Phil enrolled at WSU in Monteith College. That was a sort of College version of a Montessori school. One fellow student of Phil’s at WSU was Roberta Hall, a real live wire. The two of them had a strong bond and hung out together everywhere. They both were of a same mind, but there never was a romantic relationship. Dave dated Roberta once or twice. I was surprised there wasn’t a conflict of romantic interest with Phil. Roberta became a friend of the family and had long talks with Mom. I drove to WSU and the three of us became a car pool. We played word games, sang songs, etc. while I fought the traffic down 2^nd ave.

Phil moved to an apartment a few blocks from campus on Cass Ave. He shared it with Bill Marriott another very close artist friend. I lost track of Phil’s life after that because I was still in Ferndale and we no longer car pooled. I and another physics grad student wanted to move to campus the same time Phil and Bill wanted to move out. We took over their apartment because it was nice, clean and handy. They moved to another apartment near campus.

I could see later why they moved. Their second apartment was dumpier and less under the eye of management, so they had free reign to redecorate. They painted everything pitch black. Even the appliances, book shelves, and floor. They painted the only light bulb black, and left one small spot the size of a quarter unpainted. They put hundreds of thumb tacks into the walls and ceiling and strung yarn between them. Some areas were an intricate inter-mesh of various yarn colors.

At some point he moved to New York. I don’t know who his partner was but they got together with two lesbians and the four of them wanted to lease and share a farmhouse. That was an odd social arrangement. They were exploring different options and gave formal presentations of their ideas with flip charts or slides and prepared talks. It was fun while it lasted, but everything disintegrated over some disagreements.

He moved to the urban Queens New York and leased a second floor loft that used to be a factory of some sort. He was authorized to put a “Artist-in-Residence” sign at the entrance. That had some importance back then, but today the program leases single large spaces with many cubicals for artists to occupy for a very low rent.

His living quarters were in the manager’s office area. The manufacturing area still had heavy machines scattered in various out of the way corners. The loft was huge with probably a 20 foot ceiling. Phil had some giant paintings around 8 feet square. These were later displayed in a gallery, I think in Boston. He had a new room mate Alphy. He was very personable and low key. Alphy died while living with Phil. He called Mom to tell her the bad news. Phil was extremely distraught.

One of his projects took a full year. A camera was aimed out of their second floor window to a cross street about 200 feet away. Every day he took a picture at exactly the same time at exactly the same spot. When he left town he had a neighbor tend to the camera. He left very explicit instructions. He was a bit chagrined when one of the neighbor’s pictures had the wrong shadows and she obviously missed the exact time. The resulting slide show of 365 slides was both boring and fascinating. As the seasons went by you could see the shadows gradually change. There was rain, snow, and sunshine that came and went. One slide showed a fire engine tending to something around the corner.

He took Kathy and I to the Museum of Modern Art, MOMA. Phil wanted to take me to the MOMA for a strange experience, but refrained from telling me what it was. The featured display was environmental art. He was quite anxious for us to see specifically that. There was a hallway with a series of rooms that you could visit and feel the presence. One of the rooms was full of plant life like a jungle. The first room was crowded with lights that were mostly a brilliant white of various shapes. There were also a smattering of other colors. It was extremely blinding and quite jarring. After roaming through the various light sculptures we went to the next room which looked large, dark and boring.

I peeked my head in the door. My eyes had not readjusted from the glare of the room of lights but it looked like there was nothing in it. Phil said “Let’s go in.” I must have looked a bit reluctant. I thought, “First a light room and now a dark room. I get it. There is no point in going in.” Phil again said, “Let’s go in.” He was strangely insistent. Well, alright. So we went in. We were standing up and it seemed the most interesting thing was an exit at the other end of the room. The room was strewn with large pillows… almost mattresses. Phil said quite insistently, “Let’s sit down.” Well alright. So we sat there for a while. People would peek in and go on to the next room. Nobody else ever came in. They were most likely thinking,“First a light room and now a dark room. I get it. There is no point in going in.”

After staying in the room for a longer time than reasonable our eyes started adapting to the dark. The room started vaguely flickering. I said that it was a bit odd. I suddenly figured out that the reason for the flicker was that when people walked in and out of the light room, it blocked the light somewhat and that light was the only thing coming down the hallway to illuminate the dark room. I kept narrating what was causing the flicker. The room would get dark for a moment and then light again. We would hear the footsteps coming from the light room to the dark room where a person would peek in. I thought that was fascinating but Phil didn’t seem to care.

Then as our eyes got more dark-adapted, I noticed something very strange. The room brightened to a definite red. How did that happen? Then a woman in a large red dress walked by and peeked into the room. I was excited and exclaimed, Wow! I know what happened! As she came out of the light room and was just outside that door the light reflecting from her dress went down the hall and made our room turn red. As we sat in the room while our eyes adapted more and more to the dark, I noted the sudden changing colors were more vibrant and narrated the physics of what was happening, Phil was still silent. I turned to him and asked, “Do you think they planned it to happen this way?” Phil said rather calmly, “Oh … yeah.”

That rather long story in the dark room is not about me. It’s about Phil. I’m positive he knew what that experience would be. He could have easily and selfishly told me what would happen and spoil the experience. But he wanted me, the physicist, to experience it and figure it out for myself. I will always remember him for giving me that opportunity.

In his early years he was very sensitive about being gay. Maybe some of the family may have suspected in his later years, but it was unspoken. I was there when he came out with Mom. Mom, Kathy, Phil, and I were sitting at the kitchen table in Thorntown after Dad died. Phil indicated he had a confession. He nervously said that Bill Marriott was his lover. That must have been hard for him. Mom let out a worried grimace and a groan the conversation went to something else. The whole family accepted Phil and he had no more secrets to hide in that regard.

I wasn’t bothered about that moment but saw that it must have been hard for him. There was a little bit of silence so I wanted to diffuse it. I said there was another confession that should be made, and I told him about Dad’s previous marriage and that we have a stepsister. He didn’t know that and was surprised. I later regretted saying that at that time because I might have stole the thunder from Phil’s confession. That subject was dropped and Phil lost that moment of opportunity to say more about it if he wanted.