News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Tuesday June 16th 2026
Memories of Neil
By MATTIE WONG
My grandfather, Neil Clark, was born in the 1920s in southern Arkansas into a poor farming family. He joined the Army as a young man, scarcely twenty, and fought in WWII. For the longest time, the only thing we knew about Neil in the war was that he had earned a Silver Star, but none of us knew how or why.
The thing is, my grandfather never talked about the war. Not to anyone. Our family pieced together stories over the years, even going to a reunion of his infantry division in Memphis, Tennessee.
There we learned Neil had been instrumental in keeping himself and three other soldiers safe after they had gotten separated from their battalion in France. In trying to return to their battalion, they had stumbled across a camp of German soldiers set up in small depression. Neil spearheaded a plan to shoot over the heads of the Germans from multiple angles, making it seem as if there were far more American soldiers than there were.
Their battalion finally found them, and were able to capture an entire camp of German soldiers without any injuries to either side.… Read the rest “Memories of Neil”
One Family’s Tale: A Gift for Music and Civic Leadership
Chloe Adens, Harriet Morgan Jones, Katie and William Smith, and Lafayette Mason
247th in the series Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery…
By SUE HUNTER WEIR
Chloe Adens* was the first of four generations of her family to be buried in the Cemetery, and hers was the first recorded burial of an African American in what was referred to at the time as Layman’s Cemetery. She was born in Delaware County, Pennsylvania sometime around 1803. In 1790, Pennsylvania passed a law that stated that the child of an enslaved mother was either a free person of color or, in some cases, was an indentured servant until they reached the age of 28. Whether Mrs. Adens began life as a free person of color or as an indentured servant is not known.
She arrived in Minnesota sometime between 1850 and 1860. She had two children: a son, Jacob, who did not come West with her, and a daughter Harriet, who did. Harriet was born around 1832 and would have been in her late teens or early twenties when they moved here.… Read the rest “One Family’s Tale: A Gift for Music and Civic Leadership”
Keep citizen journalism alive!
ICE, Klan – Domestic Terrorism
By DWIGHT HOBBES
Between masked ICE agents and the Klu Klux Klan, any difference is negligible, if at all, cowardly domestic terrorists hiding from sight in broad daylight. Anonymity is a powerful weapon, license to strike, ruthlessly abuse and violently oppress, sans accountability. Strikes mind numbing panic, blood racing fear.
Make no mistake, just as Mississippi KKK murdered James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, so ICE did murder Renée Nicole Macklin Good and Alex Pretti. In cold blood. Because, they could get away with it. President Donald Trump has accomplished the unthinkable. Reversing civil rights, throwing around the term “domestic terrorism” while that’s what he’s unleashed on any and all Americans who don’t further his supremacist agenda. As PBS reported back in 2024, “Trump seeks a second term vowing to dramatically expand his use of the military at home and suggesting he would use force to go after Americans he considers ‘enemies from within.’” Vanity Fair interviewed his former chief of staff, John Kelly, documenting that “[He]…warned that Trump admires dictators—including Hitler, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un—and that he frequently expressed frustration at the limits the Constitution placed on his own power.”… Read the rest “ICE, Klan – Domestic Terrorism”