Jerry Phillips, a radio broadcaster in Washington who was a relentless advocate on local issues and for the city’s poor, died Aug. 29 at his home in the District. He was 75.
Mr. Phillips was neither flashy nor eloquent on the air, but his shows sounded like Washington, rich with neighborhood references and passionate about helping the disadvantaged. Among other community awards, he was inducted into the Washington DC Hall of Fame in 2004.
During his years at WHUR, one of Mr. Phillips’s regular guests was then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry, who often called in to the program to keep in contact with the community. Barry even called in to Mr. Phillips’s show while he was on an official trip to Africa.
The late Washington Informer newspaper publisher Calvin W. Rolark, who had his own radio show, once told The Washington Post that Mr. Phillips’s “Morning Sound” program on WHUR had “mass appeal instead of a class appeal. It allows blacks to feel proud . . . they have something they can identify with.”
Mr. Phillips said he saw himself as a bulwark against the city’s “bourgeoisie.”
“Too much power in this town is in the hands of the bankers, the developers, the money lenders,” he wrote in The Washington Post in 1990. “The board of trade, Riggs Bank, American Security, Safeway, Giant. The chamber of commerce is supposed to represent the interests of local D.C. business, particularly minority-owned business, but it doesn’t do a thing.
“But when it comes down to who pays the bill, it is the people who live here,” he added. “This is wrong. The congressman from Kickapoo, Iowa, doesn’t care about this city.”
When interviewing Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, Mr. Phillips could be unexpectedly tough, demanding to know what they had done for the local Washington community.
When Clear Channel Communications eliminated its public-affairs programing on its stations in 2005, Mr. Phillips was let go from WBIG and WTEM. He found a new venue as a regular guest on “Reporter’s Notebook” on WRC-TV (Channel 4).
Mr. Phillips, who early on studied to be a Catholic priest, once called mass media such as radio “the church of today’s society.”
He was in charge of the Praise program at the Franciscan Monastery in Northeast Washington and, according to Friar John Sebastian, was at the monastery several times each week to find different choirs to sing with during the various worship services.
Gerard Everette Phillips, a fifth-generation Washingtonian, was born Feb. 14, 1939. He graduated from Spingarn High School.
He spent 25 years working for the D.C. government before retiring about 10 years ago as a producer and director with the municipal cable channel. Early on, he helped build the D.C. Public Schools office of communications, which became a training ground for students interested in learning about the media.
His marriage to Barbara Jones ended in divorce. Survivors include a daughter, Bernadette Watson of Lanham, Md.; a brother; and two grandchildren.
In addition to his radio hosting duties, he hosted fundraisers, community parades and social events for Washington’s black society.
Mr. Phillips served on the board of Catholic Charities, Providence Hospital in Washington, the March of Dimes of the National Capital Area and the Arc of the District of Columbia, an organization that serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Last year, he hosted a Christmas fundraiser for the Capital Area Food Bank.
In a 2005 article on Mr. Phillips in The Post, Lon Anderson, a spokesman for AAA Mid-Atlantic and a frequent guest on “Metro Talk,” called the host “the main voice for the downtrodden and for small local organizations, whether it was traffic safety, drug addiction or the homeless.”
Mr. Phillips told The Post, “I studied to be a priest, so I guess this has been my priesthood, trying to help.”
