Sunday, May 16, 2021
I am forever grateful to Phil Thomas. He inspired creativity and confidence in his students and in me. In his English classes he would ask all students to pull their desks in a circle. Within this circle he valued all and encouraged us. Phil demanded excellence, but he did so in a positive way. He challenging us to think about how to make a phrase catch fire, to make a sentence sizzle. I decided to study creative writing and CanLit because of Mr. Thomas and am proud of my English degree. I followed my passion, as Phil would say to me and others.
He never knew it, but he also encouraged me to become a decent tennis player. In summers at the old Kinsmen tennis court I would hear the balls thwacking off racquets from our house on Cedar Street and say to my brother Ron “we’d better get out there and show our stuff to Mr. Thomas.”
I feel lucky that my path in life crossed with that of Phil Thomas’s.
My sympathies to his family. We all lost a lovely, kind and gracious man. You as his loved ones have lost so much more than we did.
