By: Steven Loewenstein
I had the pleasure of meeting Phil in 1976 at William Paterson University where we were both Students. What really impressed me and everyone else on Campus was that Phil had ten Missing years since his high school graduation from Fail Lawn High in 1965. However his grade point average in his first years at the University was at the top of his class putting him on the “Dean's List” and he was carrying a 21-credit semester load.
We all wondered where he had been for the last ten years and because I was also a graduate from Fair Lawn High I was delegated the honor of finding out some background about Phil. I asked the local historians who could only cue me in on the conditions that prevailed and what Phil was doing after his graduation.
The first thing I found was that Phil was in a rock band called the Thunderbirds, which played the school dances. The next thing was he became a father before his twentieth birthday. His partner was his classmate who was renown as Hot and Famously beautiful. I obtained a yearbook from FL 65 and she was really astounding. People remember the band broking up because of the Vietnam War and the draft. Then Phil was working for Part Whitney making Helicopter parts for the war effort. In about a year time he became missing assumed he had died in the War.
I requested of Phil to collaborate with me on writing his memoirs to help us understand how he could return with such academic power?