At 5-foot-7, he was a giant

John Santa

Former Great Neck School District Board of Education President Frank Phillips, a businessman and longtime political activist who championed causes from the integration of local schools in 1968 to opposing the war in Iraq, died on Sunday, Feb. 5. He was 98 years old.

Phillips died from natural causes, his daughter Karen Phillips confirmed last Friday.

“He was a man of such principle,” said Betty Phillips, Frank’s wife of 71 years. “If you knew him at any time of his life, it didn’t change with circumstances. He was a just person his whole life.”

“You would know it because if it was honest and for the good of the people,” she added, “then he was there for it and nothing could make him waiver.”

Aside from serving on the Great Neck School District Board of Education from 1964 until 1976, Phillips was a previous president of the Great Neck Education Association and the district’s Parent Teacher Association at the elementary school level.

At 45 years of age, Phillips earned a masters degree in education from the Columbia Teachers College. He also was the founder, president and CEO of Hush-A-Bye, a New Hyde Park store, which was in operation selling toys, bedding, strollers and children’s furniture for 54 years.

“It’s a tragedy when a great person such as Frank dies,” former Great Neck School Board of Education Director Michael Zarin said of Phillips, who was a resident of New Hyde Park.

Zarin said that Phillips was one of Great Neck’s administrators who helped establish the Village School in 1970.

An example of Phillips’ dedication to political activism in education, came in 1968 when he was a member of the Great Neck School Board of Education, which passed a resolution to allow up to 40 African American students from Queens attend classes in the district, Zarin said.

The school board’s action was extremely controversial in Great Neck at the time, Zarin said. It was eventually was done away with by local residents who voted against it in a referendum.

Although the attempt to integrate Great Neck’s schools was negated, Zarin said Phillips’ strong support of the civil rights initiative showed his commitment to a progressive-thinking education system.

“He was certainly a leading force in the maintenance and victory of the Great Neck school system as a continuing light house school district, as one of the best in the country,” Zarin said

In addition to his career in education, Phillips worked for most of his life as a political activist.

“We always said ‘peace, social justice and education,'” Betty Phillips said of the interests surrounding her husband’s political work.

Phillips was a longtime co-chair of the Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives. He was an early opponent of the Vietnam War and was an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq, said Lois Schaffer, a family friend who worked with Phillips on the Great Neck School Board.

When then President George W. Bush gave the commencement address at the United States Merchant Marine Academy in the Village of Kings Point in June of 2006, Schaffer said Phillips was instrumental in leading a protest against the nation’s 43rd commander in chief’s policy in regards to the war in Iraq.

“More than 350 people arrived with banners and placards,” Schaffer said during Phillips’ funeral at Riverside-Nassau North Chapel last Monday. “I saw Frank, then I didn’t see him. I had an inkling of what he was doing and trusted my instincts.”

Even though the protest was held at the Great Neck Library’s Main Branch, Schaffer said that Phillips began walking to the Merchant Marine Academy.

“I caught up to him,” Schaffer recalled. “‘Frank,’ I said, ‘you’re not permitted to do this.’ He looked me straight in the eye, and said, ‘What do you mean? I’m going.'”

“Single handedly, his goal was to get to the academy to articulate to George W. Bush what he so strongly believed in,” she added, “peace and social justice.”

Phillips was also a member of Great Neck SANE Peace Action, a political activism group dedicated to U.S. nuclear policy, along with the Human Rights Committee, fellow Great Neck political activist Shirley Romaine said.

“He was really a strong person,” Romaine said. “He had a very forceful personality. I had to say at his funeral that ‘Frank was 5-feet, 7-inches tall, but was a giant.’ He was like a force of nature and really dedicated to making a better world.”

Karen Phillips said that commitment to activism also involved her mother.

“The passion, they gave to me,” Karen Phillips said. “We were in the March on Washington in 1963. My whole family went down, my parents took us down.”

While she was attending a sit-in at the University of Chicago in the mid 1960s, Karen Phillips said her parents’ dedication to progressive causes was most glaringly on display.

“Everybody was getting messages from their parents (reading) ‘get out, you’re going to be suspended or worse,” Karen Phillips recalled. “My parents sent a telegram ‘we’re with you all the way. Stay with it.'”

Romaine, who last month was given a “Top 25 Advocates for the Arts Award” by the Long Island Arts Council, said she was a friend of the Phillips family for 36 years and witnessed the closeness between Betty and Frank.

“There were couples who are simply couples and then there are couple who are almost joined at the hip,” Romaine said. “They were such a pair. They were really role models for the century. They were so together … and adoring of each other. They really protected each other.”

It was the near ideal family situation to grow up in, Karen Phillips said of her childhood spent with brother, Dr. Robert Phillips, and sister Laurie Phillips, who died in 1995 following a battle with breast cancer.

“It was like the house where everyone wanted to have parents like my parents,” Karen Phillips said. “Even the last few days, people were coming over and saying ‘oh I always loved being in your house. There was always so much warmth.'”

Along with his wife and children, Phillips is survived by his grandchildren Jesse Levine, Daniel and Eric Phillips, Alison and Jennifer Stearns, his sons-in-law Frank Stearns and Harry Levine, and his daughter-in-law Julia Andrieni.

“I don’t think you come across a great man frequently,” Betty Phillips said of her husband. “I think he was a great man.”

Added Karen Phillips: “He was such a force for lets do what’s right. Let’s do what’s fair. Let’s do what’s just.”

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