Phil has a BA Degree in Anthropology with Honors from Florida State University, Tallahassee, Florida. His research thesis, “South City, An Ecological History of a Southern Farming Community”, traced the interaction between a farm community’s agricultural practices, its effect on the land and their effects in turn on the social structure of the community, from its founding in 1821 through the time of the study in the 1970’s.
Phil has long been committed to community service. From 1967 to 1969 he was part of an Interior Department research team in Everglades National Park. This led to spending the next two years of his life as a national leader in the environmental movement, including being responsible putting together the first Earth Day Celebration in April,1970 in Miami. He created the first environmental education program at Miami Dade Community College and taught there for two years. He was appointed during this time to the City of Miami’s Environmental Advisory Committee.
He recruited the members of the new Citizens Advisory Board of the Lubee Bat Conservancy in Gainesville, FL, an international scientific organization dedicated to saving the flying foxes of the world, the fruit bats, critical to the survival of tropical forests.
He was the founding treasurer in 1983 of the Apalachee Federation of Jewish Charities and has served on the board of his synagogue, Congregation Shomrei Torah.
His daughters Monica (an attorney who has put to use her fluency in French working pro bono in the immigration courts in Atlanta representing refugees from the violence in West Africa) and Lessa (a Librarian for the City of San Jose) are accomplished equestrians and live in Redwood City, CA with their husbands Zlatko and Brandon, computer geeks in the Silicon Valley Internet industry.
When not assisting clients Phil enjoys stamp collecting, hiking and guiding people on tours of the unique carnivorous plant bogs found in the Florida Panhandle.