Philip J. Ward III

Philip was born on the streets of New York City and spent 87 years proving he was a cowboy anyway.

The boots were real. So was the hat. He wore both long before country was cool, back when a man in a western hat in Butler, New Jersey, was making a statement whether he meant to or not. He listened to Willie, Waylon and Johnny, and he lived by the cowboy code without ever once making a speech about it. Do what has to be done. Keep your word. Finish what you start. Talk less, say more.

He stood five foot seven and everybody called him the big guy. The mighty one.

He grew up with nothing. He served in the United States Marine Corps. He started at the New York City Transit Authority driving a bus and worked his way up to manager, commuting Jersey to New York in every kind of weather there is, and nobody ever heard him complain about it, unless it would get a laugh. He retired. Then he ran transportation for a school system. He retired again. Then he ran another bus company. Then he retired again, mostly to see if it would take.

March, 1963. Alice was in a bar with her girlfriends the first time they met. Back then the girls wore a string tied around one finger, and the story went that whoever broke it was the man you'd marry. He took one look at it and said what's that on your finger, and snapped it off before anyone could stop him.

She told him he wasn't supposed to do that. That was supposed to be the man she was going to marry.

He said he was sorry.

He dated her for eight years, married her in 1971, and stayed for the fifty-five that followed. Sixty-three years from that string to this one. They came to Butler in 1977 and never left.

Then there was the brain surgery. Two doctors, separately, told the family he would not survive it. He survived it. The following summer he was in his son's pool in Texas, going in headfirst, doing flips, because that is who he was and nobody had asked the doctors for their opinion on the matter.

This too shall pass. He said it so often it stopped being a saying and started being a fact.

He claimed he didn't like pets. Yet every dog and cat in the room walked directly to him and sat down. They sensed his kind heart, and he secretly loved it.

He was a connoisseur of the cheeseburger and the chicken parm. He took enormous bites, then ate them slowly, like a chipmunk, working through it with the patience of a man who had nowhere better to be. He loved a good Irish song and could be talked into "The German Clockwinder" without much trouble at all. He played guitar, and he played "American Pie," obsessively, for what has to be fifty years running, and every person in this family can still hear it. Part leprechaun, part Johnny Cash, and all heart.

At a party, everyone wanted the seat next to him. He was funny. He was relentlessly, almost unreasonably positive. In the face of total disaster, he was the one telling you it would work out, and the strange thing is that around him it usually did.

But the reason people really came to him was that he listened. Really listened. He never judged, and he gave the kind of advice you actually took. There are people walking around today who got through the worst stretch of their lives because PJ, or Jay, or Philsy sat down and talked to them and meant every word of it. He never mentioned this to anyone. He didn't need the acknowledgement. He probably didn't think it was worth mentioning.

He said, in this life, we're all just caterpillars here, and when we go, we bloom into beautiful butterflies.

He is survived by his wife of 55 years, Alice; his sons Philip and his wife Lyndsay, Robert, and Richard; his daughter Alicia and her husband Josh; and his granddaughters Corabelle and Everlyn, who knew him as Pop Pop and had him wrapped completely.

In 87 years, nobody can recall him hurting a single person or a single animal. Eighty-seven years. That's the whole record.

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Visitation will be held Friday, July 17, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM at Morrison's Funeral Home, 86 Bartholdi Avenue, Butler, New Jersey.

A Funeral Mass will be celebrated Saturday, July 18, at 11:15 AM at St. Anthony's Church, 65 Bartholdi Avenue, Butler, New Jersey.

A repast will follow at 1:00 PM in the Grill Room at Bowling Green Country Club, 53 Schoolhouse Road, Oak Ridge, New Jersey.

In lieu of flowers or donations, the family asks something harder. Live by the cowboy code, the way he did. Take pride in your work. Do what has to be done and don't complain about it. When you make a promise, keep it. Be tough, but fair. Talk less and say more. Remember that some things aren't for sale. Know where to draw the line. And when it all goes sideways, and it will, tell somebody: this too shall pass.

Ride on, Pop Pop.