Sunday 2/25 (& Monday, 2/26)

I'm really, really gonna miss Phil.

For those of you who haven't heard yet Phil Niemisto died Sunday morning. Since falling last year he hadn't quite been the same old Phil; he'd been having trouble getting around and doing what he normally did. When I saw him a couple of weeks ago there seemed to be something a little...off with how he was acting. The day after that, he went to the hospital, where they then sent him home with hospice care and the support of a great community to live out his last few days in peace.

And now he's gone.

I'm sure you'll be reading a lot about Phil and his life and how he impacted the community many times over the next few days, so I won't go over that. What I would like to do is share some of the things I'll miss about Phil. Some of these things he did with other members of the community. Some of them (I think) he only did with me & Loraine. But all of them were quintessentially “Phil”.

I'll miss how he'd always say “It must be Saturday” when he ran into me & Loraine, usually on a Saturday. And if he'd run into us on another day, he'd always start off by saying “It's not Saturday”, and then he'd laugh.

I'll miss how we would always compare neckwear. Phil, of course, would never be seen without a tie, and on the days when I'd have one on and we'd run into each other, he would comment on what I was wearing. If I received a “That's sharp”, then I knew I had chosen well.

I'll miss how flirty Phil could be. I can't count the number of times he'd touch Loraine on the arm or give her that little wink of his, which is something he'd do with any woman he knew. That was just Phil, and it's not a surprise that the women with whom he flirted were some of his biggest fans.

I'll miss his colorful metaphors. For those of you who didn't know him that well, Phil could have quite the mouth on him, especially when it came to the drunken college kids and their escapades in his flower beds. Even just a few weeks ago, when I was talking to him after someone stole the hat off of his statue, he had a very expressive vocabulary. I don't know why, but I always found that charming, maybe because he wouldn't speak like that with everyone.

I'll miss being his “agent”. When he was one of the speakers at a History Center event on the old Orphanage and every TV station in Marquette wanted to interview him, he had me set them up for him. And when they unveiled his statue last October and there were people and cameras and mics everywhere, he'd keep looking at me (I was sitting under them all, in his sight-line), would shake his head, and then go back to smiling for the gathered throng.

Most of all, though, I'll just miss having Phil around. He was one of those rare individuals that almost everyone knew, one of those people who could connect a disparate group of business owners and downtown dwellers and friends and fans and random strangers and make us all into a unique little community. Our lives were all a little better, a little richer, a little more colorful, just because we knew Phil.

I doubt there will be another like him, and we're all just a bit the lesser because of it.

We'll miss you, Phil.

(jim@wmqt.com)