Phillip Ray Rosson

Phillip Ray Rosson, 89, passed suddenly July 6, leaving family members and friends to mourn his wry sense of humor, generous heart – and to offer a spirited embrace of his lifelong oppositional defiance disorder.
Phill may be best memorialized by the hundreds of students whose careers he helped launch as an electronics instructor at Bakersfield College over his 35-year career there. His patience with his students – who were learning sophisticated, technical concepts – was often counterbalanced by the frustration and impatience he betrayed when clashing with administrators as a teachers' union representative during labor negotiations.
While it was a love of history that eventually earned him his bachelor's degree in that field from Cal State, Bakersfield, it was his technical prowess and keen mind that led him into aerospace electronics in the late 1950s, beginning work at the Nike missile defense system in Los Angeles. In the early 1960s, as an electronics assembly mechanic with North American Aviation, he went on to assist with the electronics systems for the rockets that comprised the early, manned Apollo missions to the moon.
Nevertheless, Phill also had a dream and love for teaching, which was further spurred by a volatile aerospace industry well-known for its routine, mass layoffs.
Having met his future (and tiny, 4'8") wife Alice Acquilin on a city bus to Compton Junior College, the two discovered that, while they may have had mutual friends, they couldn't have come from more diverse backgrounds: he from working-class southern-midwestern heritage and she from Maltese descent by way of New York City. They fell in love and married in 1959.
They also shared aspirations for teaching, and, in 1965, moved north to Bakersfield to fulfill that destiny, marking his one and only teaching job.
Phill and Alice began their own family later in their careers, beginning with Alice Michelle (now Phipps) in 1970, followed by Mary Elizabeth in 1981.
Surrounded by three women in his life – which later increased to four when his mother came to live with the family in 1994 – Phill retreated into his work and hobbies, including his avid love of military history and an impressive gun collection.
Having served in the National Guard Reserve from 1953 through 1958, and rising to the rank of captain, Phill was steeped in military protocols and procedures that required some uhh adjustment as a married man with daughters.
Reinforcements arrived when his oldest daughter Michelle married Robert Phipps, and they in turn provided him with grandsons Randy and Ryan Phipps. Mary, in turn, is engaged to John Watson, Jr., also of Bakersfield and a fellow educator. He was also bolstered by Robert's three brothers, Steve, Rick and Ron, with whom he regularly socialized.
Phill was born in February 1936 in Fayetteville, AK. and was the oldest of Julian and Vera Rosson's (nee Stringer) three sons. A foreman with the Atomic Energy Commission, Julian moved the family around the country routinely, making for a difficult, transitory childhood in which Phill was expected to help raise his younger brothers, Larry and Jimmy Ed.
From Colorado Springs, CO to Witchita, KN, Memphis, TN and then onto Corpus Christi, TX and Draper, UT, among several others, the Rossons were in a different city practically every year from 1936 to 1945.
Eventually, Julian and Vera (whom Phill referred to from a young age as "Vera") parted, and the three brothers spent time between the two households. In 1956, Vera married William "Bill" Carr. Bill was a postal carrier and former naval seaman who had been assigned to a submarine in World War II and was also a purchasing agent in the Marshall Islands during hydrogen bomb testing after the war. Phill and Bill enjoyed a healthy father-son relationship that lasted until Bill's death in 1993.
After serving with both the Bakersfield College Academic Senate and the faculty negotiating committee alongside his normal teaching duties with gifted partners like Robert Lackey, Phill was looking forward to enjoying his retirement and traveling with Alice in the early 2000s.
Those plans were dashed when Alice died at age 68 in 2004. Phill was understandably bereft but committed to traveling regularly after Alice's death, visiting London twice, Washington, D.C., Texas and Minnesota. He also delighted in Sunday night dinners and holidays with family.
In his later years, he took great pleasure in polishing his gun collection while watching John Wayne or Randolph Scott movies, or even Jethro Gibbs from "NCIS," and promising to help as soon as he was needed. He continued tending his yard personally until his death.
He also discovered a whole new family in the owners and staff at various nearby diners, including Elias and the servers at Sugar Mill and the crew at Milt's Coffee Shop. The Rossons owe a big thank you, deep appreciation and great love to those who took such good care of Phill.
The Rosson family would also like to thank Dr. Luis Cousin and the staff at Mohawk Medical Group, and the lifetime of pet care provided by the staff at Stiern Veterinary Hospital, who tended the legion of dogs and cats the Rossons tended over the decades.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests donations to readers' own favorite charities, the Bakersfield College Foundation, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) and the Wounded Warrior Project.
Phill will be cremated at Greenlawn Cemetery Southwest. No services are scheduled.