Okfuskee, OK – Obit - Leon C. Phillips, abt 1891-1958 Contributor: Rustie Lang Rlang90547@aol.com 08/11/1999 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the contributor’s legal representative, and contact the listed USGenWeb Archivist with proof of this consent. The contributor has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reprinted with permission from the Tulsa World. Burial to be in Weleetka LEON C. PHILLIPS' RITES TO BE MONDAY IN OKEMAH Mar 28, 1958 Services for Leon C. (Red) Phillips, plain spoken anti-new Deal Democrat who was Oklahoma's ninth elected governor, will be held at 2 p.m. Monday in the First Presbyterian church at Okemah. Burial will be in the Weleetka Cemetery under the direction of the Parks Funeral Home. The 67-year-old lawyer and colorful political figure died of a heart attack Thursday after climbing the stairs to the second floor of the Okmulgee post office during the noon hour when the elevator was not running. Phillips had not been active in public life in the last 10years, but in the decade from 1933 through 1942 he was a central figure on the state's political stage. He served in the 1933, 1935 and 1937 sessions of the Legislature as a representative from Okfuskee County, and was Speaker of the House in the 1935 session, the first of the E. W. Marland administration. He was governor from 1939 to 1943. At the outset of his second legislative term in 1941, he decided to back a constitutional amendment which would force the state to live within its income. The legislature accepted the idea and called a special election on March 11, 1941, at which the budget balancing amendment was adopted by the people. Ever since, Oklahoma has been on a cash basis. Phillips was born a Republican, and, as he said, became a Democrat "by choice." Marland was elected governor in 1934 on a platform which called for bringing the New Deal to Oklahoma. He ws persuaded to accept Phillips as speaker of the first session of the Marland administration by Phillips' law partner, Frank P. Douglass, who had one been one of Marland's "Young Turks." The session had hardly started before Phillips turned on the administration and became the leader of the forces fighting Marland's program. If the spectacular fight with Phillips, the son of a poor and conservative pioneer farm family, pitted against a former multi-millionaire liberal. The trades which Marland's henchmen made to keep the House from electing Phillips speaker again in 1937 set the stage for what has been known since as the "Spending Sixteenth" session of the legislature. Marland got most of his program, but the state paid a dear price in term of unnecessary jobs and purely political expenditures. While Phillips was reduced to a voice "crying in the wilderness" his friends in the legislature helped him pass a bill which improved the key to his political future. That bill abolished the runoff primary. Marland had run for U.S. senator in 1936 and was expected to run again in 1938. The thought in the legislature was that Phillips, who aspired to be a federal judge, was putting the bill through as a favor to Elmer Thomas who was coming up for reelection in 1938. As governor, Phillips fought his chief battles with the national administration over the Denison and Grand River dams. He stood on the banks of the Red River and ordered the U.S. Army to get out of Oklahoma. The Army - a couple of officers - retired in the face of Phillips' verbal blasts. But in time returned to build the great reservoir project. Phillips took a leaf from William H. (Alfalfa Bill) Murray's scrapbook and used state troops to stop the closing of the Grand River Dam because he was not satisfied with the deal, which had been made for replacing roads to be inundated. The New Dealers took Phillips to Chicago as chairman of the Oklahoma delegation to the 1940 Democratic national convention, subject to instructions which were so tight that Oklahomans and Phillips had to continue voting for Franklin D. Roosevelt for a third term even though Roosevelt had released all his delegates. Political memory carries no more characteristic picture of the 300-pound, red- headed Oklahoman than the scene on the floor of the convention as 1,200 delegates paraded around the hall shouting the name "Roosevelt," while Phillips sat in his chair holding firmly to one of the Oklahoma standards, his jaw set firmly on an unlighted cigar. After going out of office, Phillips registered as a Republican, apparently in the hope the Republicans would back him but governor. But L.H. Wentz, who was running the Republican party wasn't interested and in time, Phillips, bitter and disillusioned, switched back to the Democrats. Surviving are his widow, a son and a daughter.