Curtis W. Phillips
Curtis W. Phillips
Jan. 26, 1925 – May 10, 2016
Curtis William Phillips was born Jan. 26, 1925, to Kenneth W. (KW) Phillips and Ramona (Norton) Phillips of Manhattan, Kansas. He was the fifth of their seven children. He grew up on the family dairy farm and attended nearby schools. He graduated from Stockdale High School, fourth in his class in 1943 (there were only four in the class). They closed the high school after that and he always said that is why he only attended one semester at Kansas State. He didn’t want them to close, also!
But that wasn’t the real reason. The United States was at war. The Draft Board offered him the choice of farm or fight. America needed food and a lot of the local young men were gone to war, including Curtis’s older brother, Harlan. Curtis chose to stay on the family farm and help the neighbors. Some of the neighbors were the parents of his girlfriend, Gladys Goff. They formed a hay-baling team with Gladys driving the tractor pulling the baler and Curtis supplying the muscle, loading the hayrack.
Curtis and Gladys were married when she graduated from K State in 1947. To this union their two sons were born, Ted in 1948 and Robin in 1949. Their happy family on the farm was threatened by the Army Corps of Engineers’ plan to cover their valley farmland with a flood control lake. Curtis and Gladys and their neighbors fought hard against the big dam foolishness. Curtis’s creative mowing of “Stop Big Dam Foolishness” in their hayfield caught national attention when the Associated Press ran the aerial view. But they lost, and joined the many farm families and several communities (more than 6,000 people) displaced by Tuttle Creek Lake.
Through friends in the purebred Holstein circle, Curtis met Paul Luebbe, who told him about a farm for sale near him and his brother, Alvin. It was a good farm and Curtis and his brothers, Earl and Alan, made it better. They moved their purebred Holstein milking herd and families to the Beaver Crossing area in 1957.
Curtis was active in his church, Friedens United Church of Christ in Goehner, serving as council chair a number of times and covering the steeple on the old church with aluminum when no one else volunteered. He served on the local school board. He was active in the dairy co-op, Central States and then Mid-America Dairymen. He was the president of Drinc, their co-op’ s dairy research branch to develop new uses for milk. He and Gladys traveled a lot with his position on dairy boards and that suited them to a T.
Family trips were important to Curtis and Gladys. The only way you can take time off on a dairy farm is to leave it. Some of the trips involved delivering young purebred Valla Vista bull calves across the country. Sales were made because both the Phillipses and the bulls delivered the goods! All this roaming around was possible because son Ted and Curtis’s brother Earl kept the dairy and farming operation going while they were gone. In their living room hangs a U.S. map with all the roads they have driven outlined in black. Through their married life, they visited all 50 states as well as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico and Costa Rica.
In the office hangs another large U.S. map with pins marking all the airports that they flew into commercially or in their own plane. When his sons were established away from home, Curtis fulfilled a lifelong dream and learned to fly. With Gladys as his navigator and photographer, they roamed the skies visiting friends, picking up farm equipment parts and for just the sheer joy of it. Curtis shared his love of flying whenever he could. He took 900 + non-paying passengers up to see the neighborhood from a new angle and for over 100 of them this was their first time in a plane. They joined a wonderful organization called the International Flying Farmers and Ranchers. They went up through the ranks with Curtis serving as president in 1981. This organization filled their lives with wonderful friends and great activities.
Curtis lost his life partner and traveling companion in 2008, when Gladys died. He remained on the farm doing his own cooking and laundry until he passed away on May 10, 2016, at the age of 91 years.
Preceding him in death were his parents, wife Gladys, sisters Mary Phillips and Ruth Prejean, and brother Harlan Phillips.
Survivors include his children, Ted and Elaine Phillips of Beaver Crossing and Robin and Connie Phillips of Goehner; grandchildren and great-grandchildren, Jeramy and Janae Phillips of Seward, Jarod and Jakob, Chad and Julie Phillips of Garland, Sabryn, Cooper, Jagger and River, Jennifer Phillips of Dorchester, Lane and Amanda Phillips of Omaha and Maira, Eliot Phillips of Los Angeles, California, and Adele Phillips of Ukiah, California; sister, Norma Casford (Ken) of Whittier, California; brothers, Earl Phillips of Seward, Alan Phillips (Donna) of Manhattan, Kansas; sister-in-law, Eleanor Phillips of Dennison, Kansas; nieces, nephews, friends and neighbors.
A funeral service was held May 14, 2016, at Friedens United Church of Christ in Goehner with the Rev. Tamara Holtz officiating. Graveside services and interment followed in Mound Prairie Cemetery near Seward. Memorial donations may be made to the International Flying Farmers and Ranchers or to Friedens United Church of Christ in Goehner.
