Martin Lammon | February 2023

On November 7, 2022, our community lost a dear friend. For most of a decade, Philip Gerard’s service to our association was unparalleled, as I learned firsthand when I joined AWP’s Board of Directors at the 1998 annual conference in Portland, Oregon. Philip was completing a two-year stint as Board President, after serving for years as Program Directors Council Chair and as a board advisor. After his term as President, he was as an advisor for two more years, providing essential institutional memory to new board members (like me) and new staff.

When Writer’s Chronicle editor Supriya Bhatnagar asked me to write an “appreciation,” I agreed without hesitation. I’d worked closely with Philip during my five years on the AWP board (1998–2003), and for several years later in various endeavors. Philip Gerard was an AWP mentor and friend who had meant a lot to me.

When I first joined the board, what I didn’t know was how instrumental Gerard had been in rescuing AWP from the brink of collapse. At that meeting, Philip and then Executive Director David Fenza reviewed the financial crisis AWP had faced just three years earlier: the staff and budget were cut to the bone; AWP had to repay a large rescue loan from George Mason University, our new home institution. I was shocked, but soon relieved to hear the rest of the story: AWP was ahead of schedule repaying that loan and well on the road to recovery.

I’ll never forget how Philip passed around a hat, asking for the board to chip in and pay for dinner. “It’s become a tradition,” he explained, “one more way we can do our part to help.”

What I didn’t know until then was how Chronicle editor Fenza had stepped up in 1995 to become AWP’s emergency executive director, and how Philip would become board president—in the middle of this crisis, positions surely no sensible person could have wanted. Years later, Philip would recall: “when Mr. Fenza stepped in as ED and rescued a bankrupt AWP deeply in debt and in trouble with the Inspector General for the NEA, I can testify that he acted always with honor, professionalism, and selfless devotion to the membership.” What I didn’t know until the spring of 1998 was how Gerard and Fenza had worked so hard to save our sinking ship. Of course, others contributed to AWP’s salvation, but nobody, I believe, deserves more thanks.

Digging into old notes, emails, letters, and other documents, I confirmed even more how Philip was a persistent advocate for membership and the community that AWP fostered. Our association’s remarkable recovery and exponential growth at the beginning of a new century could never have happened without such a steady hand and an even bigger heart.

But as I dug deeper into this man’s life, I discovered more that I didn’t know.

When I heard that Philip had unexpectedly passed away, my first thought was about an essay of his I often assigned, “What They Don’t Tell You About Hurricanes,” included in Writing Creative Nonfiction, which Philip had edited with former board president Carolyn Forché (AWP received a portion of proceeds from book sales). The essay ends with the storm’s demolition of the harbor’s boats and docks, including Philip’s beloved sloop Savoir-Faire. “What they don’t tell you about hurricanes,” he closes, “is how many ways they can break your heart.”

What I didn’t really know, down deep, was how much Philip meant to those who truly loved him, his colleagues, students, and others at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington; the friends with whom he made music and eventually an album, American Anthem, the last item on his list of lifelong “ambitions” (which he’d actually written down in the sixth grade).

His wife Jill recalls in a touching memorial for the Wilmington Port City Daily: “Some nights he would ‘sing me’—shorthand for our own private concerts. He would sing me old favorites, and I always got to hear new songs first.” Nearby, no doubt, was Philip’s beloved dog Daisy.

The more I read Jill’s memorial, the more I listened to online interviews or to Philip’s public radio station podcasts—the more I heard him talking about history or politics or singing songs with his friends—the more his voice seemed far off yet not so far. But the more I learned, the more it hurt to realize how little I knew a man who’d nevertheless meant so much to me.

What no one ever told me, when I agreed to write this appreciation, was how much it would break my heart that I didn’t know Philip better.

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If you never knew Philip (or even if you knew him well), I hope you’ll read Jill Gerard’s Port City Daily article for a deeper appreciation of his many gifts. Or explore audio, video, and text files at Philip’s website, or follow the newly created Facebook page “Celebrating Philip Gerard.”

A scholarship has been established in Philip’s name. Jill has set up a “GoFundMe” page, or contributions can be made directly at UNCW’s “Philip Gerard Graduate Fellowship” page.

I hope you’ll join me in honoring Philip by adding your gift to support this scholarship. What I do know is how hard he worked to support his students, and how much he cared about them. Adding our support for this scholarship is the least we can do to honor Philip’s immeasurable contributions to AWP and its members.

Martin Lammon’s latest book is The Long Road Home: Poems. For 21 years, he held the Fuller E. Callaway Endowed Flannery O’Connor Chair at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, where he founded the MFA program and the journal Arts & Letters. From 1998–2003 he served on AWP’s board of directors (and as President from 2000–2002). Retired now from full-time teaching, he lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia.