Evolution Icon Evolution

Phillip E. Johnson: A Lucky Ice Storm

Editor’s note: Phillip E. Johnson, Berkeley law professor and author of Darwin on Trial and other books, died on November 2. Evolution News is currently sharing remembrances from Fellows of Discovery Institute. Dr. Richards’s current book is The Human Advantage: The Future of American Work in an Age of Smart Machines.

My fondest memory of Phil is from a few days we spent together in the early 2000s. He and I were the speakers for a conference in Salem, Oregon. It was during the winter, the region was hit with an ice storm, and the airports were closed. So Phil and his wife Kathie flew to Seattle.

My wife Ginny, our daughter Gillian (then a toddler), and I met up with them and we travelled together by train to the conference, and then took the train back to Seattle two days later. Although I had been with Phil many times at conferences and meetings, our train rides together gave us hours of uninterrupted time to talk. (This was before smart phones!) I’m so thankful for that ice storm.

Photo credit: Casey Tucker on Unsplash.

Jay W. Richards

Senior Fellow at Discovery, Senior Research Fellow at Heritage Foundation
Jay W. Richards, Ph.D., is the William E. Simon Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, and the Executive Editor of The Stream. Richards is author or editor of more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated (2013) and Indivisible (2012); The Human Advantage; Money, Greed, and God, winner of a 2010 Templeton Enterprise Award; The Hobbit Party with Jonathan Witt; and Eat, Fast, Feast. His most recent book, with Douglas Axe and William Briggs, is The Price of Panic: How the Tyranny of Experts Turned a Pandemic Into a Catastrophe.

Share

Tags

Darwin on TrialDiscovery InstituteGinny Richardsice stormJay W. RichardsOregonPhillip E. JohnsonSalemSeattleThe Human Advantagetrain travel