Phil West
Biography
An only child born three weeks before Pearl Harbor, I absorbed love and a deep sense of justice from my parents. My father was the minister of small Methodist Churches, and my mother always worked as an editor or secretary. They both loved words, I was their only child, and we talked constantly.
After high school, I studied at Hamilton College, Union Theological Seminary, and the University of Cambridge. I followed my father into the ministry and served churches in New York City and Connecticut for 23 years. Everywhere, I encountered public corruption that bled government budgets and crushed ordinary people.
Anne Grant and I married in 1965, and we discovered the world together while raising two sons. In 1988, she became executive director of Rhode Island’s largest shelter for women and children suffering domestic violence. I followed her to Providence. A Connecticut lawyer had warned against our moving to Rhode Island. He rattled off stories about mobsters and crooked public officials, but we arrived at a crucial moment in the state’s struggle with historic corruption. I found work with Common Cause, where my first assignment was to draft an ethics complaint against Rhode Island’s sitting governor, Edward DiPrete. The Ethics Commission levied a record fine, and DiPrete later went to prison.
A banking scandal broke in 1991, and I helped to organize the RIght Now! Coalition that won landmark reforms in ethics and the financing of campaigns. Then came constitutional amendments: Four-year terms for statewide General Officers, Merit Selection of all Rhode Island state judges, and Modernizing Rhode Island’s General Assembly.
During those campaigns, we learned that Rhode Island’s corruption had historic roots in the legislature’s virtually unchecked control of state government, which dated from the Royal Charter of 1663. Common Cause launched what became a ten-year campaign for a Separation of Powers Amendment to the State Constitution. In 2004, an overwhelming 78.3 percent of state voters approved. We then turned our attention to reconstructing more than seventy boards and commissions to comply with the amendment.
In 2005, I was diagnosed with lymphoma and began years of chemotherapy. With Anne’s support, I retired from Common Cause and began writing a first-person history of these developments, Secrets and Scandals: Reforming Rhode Island, 1986-2006, which came out in 2014. I’m thankful to have been cancer-free for twelve years.
Since its beginnings in 2015, I’ve enjoyed helping develop The Village Common. Now I volunteer to drive people, nurture the Oak Hill Neighborhood Circle, and tell stories with words and photographs.
Artist's Statement
My mother loved sunlight, color, and the changing seasons. Both parents taught me to notice beauty and cherish people. We lived in Grahamsville, a tiny Catskill Mountain town with a single street along a stream in a steep valley. Directly behind our house, I often climbed with my dog through a steep meadow into a forest studded with huge boulders left there by glaciers.
My parents gave me a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye camera, and I found joy in taking pictures. Before we recognized that I was near-sighted and needed glasses, I used the viewfinder with my better eye, the left, and never changed. Years later, as neurologists analyzed brain functions, it seemed possible that using left eye/right side of brain enhanced my photo composition.
For decades, I used a Canon AE-1 to take photos for newsletters and family albums. Digital photography appeared just before I retired, allowing me to take lots of photos without worrying about the price of film. I also loved being able to see and edit photos instantly. I took the photos in this gallery with a digital Canon or an iPhone. Juxtaposing photos helps me tell stories without words. In these photos, you’ll find images that embody my delight in light, people, places, and nature.
Editor's Note: Phil West can be seen, camera in hand, almost any morning walking the Seekonk River shoreline from Swan Point Cemetery to the Blackstone Conservancy. He continues his civic activism through his witness and advocacy. He is a regular contributor of his photography and writing to The Village Common’s monthly newsletter.