Joseph Michael Phillips, 85, English teacher, James Joyce scholar, and father of nine

Joseph Michael Phillips, 85, of Philadelphia, a retired high school English teacher, James Joyce scholar, and the father of nine children, died Thursday, April 19, of complications from Lewy body dementia at the VNA Hospice in East Falls.

Dr. Phillips lived in Lansdowne while raising his family and later moved to Center City. He was best known as an educator, as the head of the English department at Central High School and later, Thomas A. Edison High School, both in Philadelphia.

Laurie Allen, a digital-scholarship librarian at the University of Pennsylvania Library, was in Dr. Phillips' senior advanced-placement English course at Central High in 1993-94.

He required his students to memorize and recite the difficult General Prologue to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in Middle English. The YouTube recording below breaks down the unfamiliar language:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXMypzdWxsc

"If you're too shy to do it during class, you may find me in my office during office hours," Allen remembers Dr. Phillips telling the students. "He was a great teacher. He took his subject and his students really seriously. He could be sort of light, but he was also sort of terrifying. He loved the literature he taught and he expected his students to try to love it, too."

Born in Philadelphia to Maryellen Lynch and John Phillips, Dr. Phillips had a difficult start. His father died when he was 3. His mother, who had five other children, sent him to Girard College, an orphanage and school that served fatherless boys.

He spent the next decade living and studying at the school and when he graduated in 1950 was voted "most radical" member of his class.

Dr. Phillips earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Villanova University in 1954, a master's degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957, and a doctoral degree in English literature from Temple University in 1971.

His doctoral thesis was an analysis of how modern scientific and philosophical concepts of space and time were used in James Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake.

In 1955, Dr. Phillips married Bertha Ann Hughes, a nurse and political activist, with whom he had nine children.

"He was a working-class intellectual," said his daughter Susan Phillips, a reporter at WHYY. "Although he spent most of his life exploring ideas of the mind, he could build anything, from a backyard deck to a swing set. Our home was full of books, our basement full of tools."

He began teaching English at Central High School in 1959. By 1968, he had transferred to Edison High School, where an experimental "career academy" was underway. The pilot program, a brainchild of then-Deputy Mayor Charles Bowser, was intended to increase attendance, graduation rates, and employment rates among failing students.

According to a 2014 study, Dr. Phillips was the first academic person to join the program. As head of Edison's English department, he became an important component, wrote study author Mark A. Thompson in his doctoral thesis in the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska.

At the end of the first year, the academy's 25 students were attending school most of the time, participating in class, and learning a trade. Edison's successful model was replicated in the Philadelphia School District and across the nation, the study said.

While at Edison, Dr. Phillips also taught English as an adjunct professor at La Salle College, now a university.

He returned to Central High School as English department chair in 1986 and remained there until his retirement in 1995. Afterward, he continued to work as a consultant for Edison High School.

For the last decade, Dr. Phillips had battled Lewy body dementia, an illness that resembles Parkinson's disease.

Rathe Miller, a close friend for the last five years, said he spent hours learning about literature, theology, education, politics, and philosophy from Dr. Phillips.

"I learned from him to drink my coffee black and keep my intellectual processes rigorous," said Miller.

Dr. Phillips was proud to have met several famous public figures. In 1980, he served Jimmy Carter cookies and coffee while the president campaigned for reelection. The meeting took place in the Phillipses' backyard in Lansdowne.

In 1989, President George H.W. Bush recognized him for excellence in teaching during a ceremony at the White House.

Dr. Phillips and his wife divorced. She died in 2012. He married and divorced Judith Renyi, who survives.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by daughters Maryellen Stoykov, Monica Cook, Patricia Phillips-Batoma, Angela Phillips, and Rachel Phillips; sons Joseph Jr., Frank, and Al; 16 grandchildren; and a large extended family.

A viewing starting at 9 a.m. Thursday, April 26, will be followed by a 10 a.m. Funeral Mass at Our Mother of Consolation Catholic Church, 9 E. Chestnut Hill Ave., Philadelphia. Burial is private.