Elmer S. "Flip" Phillips

Obituary
ELMER "FLIP" S. PHILLIPS
The "Voice of the Big Red," heard for 26 years at Schoellkopf Field's home football games, is no more. It belonged to "Flip" Phillips, a Cornell professor whose diverse passions included photography, win-making, gardening, wood-working, public speaking and, of course, football. A perfectionist in pursuing all these interests, he delighted colleagues by producing more than they expected, and frustrated those who request for just "good enough" work were inevitably rejected. He turned those hobbies and interests into lasting civic and educational accomplishments.Those standards of perfectionism came from his mother, Cora Phillips, who expected much of the elder of her two sons. His father, George Phillips, owned a small trucking company, succeeding despite only a third-grade education. Born on May 21, 1908 at Brighton, NY, Flip was schooled at Rochester Public School #33 and East High School. Cora instilled in him from an early age a sense of achievement, evident in his attainment of Eagle status in the Boy Scouts, a commitment that continued during his first decade in Ithaca as he worked with local troops and the Executive Council of Boy Scouts. The first in his family to go to college he received his B.S. degree from Cornell in 1932, the same year he married Gladys "Pat" W. Douglass, also from Rochester.To help finance his way through college, he applied his photographic skills, which he had learned from his mother, mainly in producing pictures for published papers by the College of Agriculture's academic staff. After graduating, he continued part-time photography work for two years, but his services were so popular, that the asked the Dean to set up a unit within the college. Although this was initially refused, in 1935, Flip was appointed an instructor in extension, becoming an assistant professor in 1941. During this time, he also thoughout oral and written expressions, and originated program material on a continuing basis for WHCU's radio broadcasts, then originating in a small campus studio, now demolished, located where Malott Hall stands today.World War II saw increasing demands on the state's agriculture, and Flip was at the forefront of the college's extension efforts in training county agents to assist farmers in food production and homemakers in food conservation and preservation. Wartime restrictions on the college's auto fleet accelerated Flip's concern to develop audio-visual training aids and instructional technology to support extension workers in the field. Despite the lack of sufficient equipment at the college and in the counties, Flip provided the leadership and technical guidance for producing 16mm training films and audio-visual presentations.His courses in photography and visual aids always attracted large classes of students, enhanced by his close relationship with Eastman Kodak Company, which provided him with Kodak color film before it was launched on the market. This enabled him to engage in pioneering work in photographic methods, gaining national recognition when the first 16mm film on the physiology of the developing chick embryo, produced with the Professor Alexis Romanoff, was shown at the annual meeting of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers in Washington, D.C. in 1937. This work involved photographing hundreds of embryos at various stages of development until a complete sequence was obtained. Still photos from that project were featured in Life magazine, one of the first early color pages in that magazine. Flip's relationship with Kodak, testing products and assisting development efforts, continued through the fifties and sixties.Working with a highly professional team, Flip produced audio-visual programs on how New York City received its food supplies, farm horseshoeing, color standards for McIntosh apples, culling hens for egg production, and widely acclaimed motion picture "Roots of Empire" highlighting New York State agriculture, a film that required collaboration by the college with industry and state government. An early application of time-lapse photography resulted in a document of spoilage resulting from improper handling during apple harvesting. He also produced films on food canning and freezing, which had profound and widespread positive results in the adoption of modern food preservation. In all, Flip produced more than 50 motion picture and scores of visual aids presentations.At the end of the Second World War, Cornell's Department of Extension Teaching and Information was formed, with Flip as head of its Visual Aids Services unit. Over the next two decades, the college department grew to include a large darkroom, well-equipped exhibit design and production studio, and a motion picture studio, enabling him to develop classroom instruction and provide support to other campus departments. Yearly production of exhibits for the New York State Fair saw the staff engaged in a frenzy of activity, which was eventually rewarded at the fairground by the appreciative comments of viewers. Flip was particularly pleased with the reception given at one point by then-governor Nelson Rockefeller. Flip's guiding communication philosophy was to involve and appeal to as many of the senses as possible in sharing ideas and knowledge. Much of the success of his work lay in his ability to extract complex scientific issues from the academic staff and express them in clear and simple visuals, often to the astonishment of the originators. He was an innovative practitioner of "Multi-media" long before the term came into our vocabulary.Flip's increasing visibility nationally led him to be dubbed "The father of visual aids," at least in colleges of agriculture throughout the US, with the Foreign Agriculture Service of the USDA and other international agencies benefiting from his services. During a 1956-57 sabbatical with the International Cooperation Administration (ICA) Inter-American Institute of Agriculture Services, he held workshops and consultations in a dozen Central and South American countries, and he developed USDA-FAS communication workshops for ICA trainees from other countries.Flip's professional affiliations included the Photographic Association of America, Biological Photographic Society and the Association of Agricultural College Editors. He served as consultant to several national organizations and government and government agencies, including NASA, and he published widely in academic journals, newsletters and other media. He was an editor of the American Wine Society Journal, wrote Still Wines from Grapes, and contributed several chapters to the Complete Handbook of Winemaking-all outcomes of his pursuit of excellence in a home winemaking hobby and a desire to share his knowledge with others.Diligently as he served Cornell, Flip also supported church and community. He was a trustee of the former East Lawn School District, and he was a member of the committee to explore the pooling of resources by the city and town of Ithaca and Cayuga Heights village. In the 1950's he chaired the committee that produced the first zoning ordinance for the town of Ithaca, and he was a member of both the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals, posts that created some conflict for him as he came in conflict with developers who did not appreciate these early efforts to preserve Ithaca's beauty and heritage. He served as the communication liaison between the media and the new Tompkins Community Hospital planning committee, eventually becoming a member of that committee, and he later served on the TCH Board of Managers. He was the longest continuous member of the City Club of Ithaca, for 58 years, including the early years as the Exchange club, and was one of the architects of the break-away from the national Exhange organizatio