Tributes

by Dave Liljengren

Philip Enoch Liljengren, my father, came into the world, he liked to say, between verses of the closing hymn. The son of a Covenant pastor, he was born late morning, Sunday, August 13, 1911, in West Warwick, Rhode Island. In accordance with the customs of the times, Philip’s father was not present at the birth and had to wait until he’d delivered the benediction to find out that his second child was a boy.

Phil enjoyed telling that story, and he had many stories to tell, because it put him squarely in the world of hymns and church music from the instant of his first, slapped-bottom outcry. Phil loved sacred music and the sound of the human voice. Choirs, glee clubs, quartets, soloists, all sent him into waves of ecstasy. He sang in the North Park Church choir for many years, contributing what seemed like an impossibly high tenor sound from the back row of the choir loft.

Though he had no patience for the secular kind, Phil enjoyed all manner of religious music and was likely to sing along at any time. His children will always remember him playing vinyl records of performers like Artur Erikson, the Swedish singing evangelist, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and singing loudly. Such times were the good times and his enthusiasm was infectious.

Growing up in a pastor’s family, Phil would live in Topeka, Kansas; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Manistee, Michigan; and Ashtabula, Ohio before coming to Chicago and North Park College in 1928. North Park, the confluence of faith and learning, would give him an education, a job, and a focus to his life for the next 50 years.

Phil graduated from North Park Junior College in 1930 and Northwestern University in 1932. He received a Masters degree in Education from Ohio State University in 1939.

In the mid 1930s he taught briefly at Ashtabula High School in northeastern Ohio. This period in his life is important in family lore because it was then that he learned the school song. Years later he taught this song, a ditty heaping praise on an obscure small-town secondary school, to everyone in the family so that it could be sung on family car trips. To this day, his children, three middle-aged adults in very different walks of life, can each, on command, launch into “Come on along and sing a song of Ashtabula High . . . ,” the Alma Mater of a school they’ve never seen.

He then got a teaching job at North Park Academy. In this period he struck up a friendship with the late J. William Fredickson, beginning a family alliance that continues to this day. Bill and Phil are reputed to have set off on a car trip to California during a month-long vacation. Though they only got as far as Colorado before being forced by time considerations to turn back, their adventure was packed with so many unusual people and experiences that the two retold the story of their trip at joint family Thanksgiving meals for the next forty years.

Phil was morally opposed to the taking of human life in any setting, even a government-sanctioned one like warfare, and was classified a conscientious objector after being drafted for service in World War II. He spent the war doing work of national importance in the Civilian Public Service. Much of this time he was stationed in Wellston, Michigan, not far from his former home in Manistee.

In 1945, he served as a human guinea pig in a starvation study at the University of Minnesota. He lost a third of his body weight from the experiment, dropping from 180-plus pounds to 126. The Life magazine photos taken of the guinea pigs, run with an article “They Starved for Science,” show Phil frail and sickly, most of his head already gray at age 33. The experiment taught Phil to respect food. He would never tolerate even the smallest squandering of food, knowing that someone, somewhere was starving.

After the war, Phil returned to North Park. He taught English and Journalism in the Academy and College through the late forties and fifties.

In 1947, while working in Finland with Bill Fredrickson on a Quaker program to rebuild houses destroyed in the war, Bill introduced Phil to his cousin, Doris Lind. The two fell in love on an ocean liner bringing them back from Europe and were married the following year. They had three children, Peter, Ann, and David. Their 39 year marriage cane to an end in 1987 when Doris passed away. Phil never recovered from her loss.

In the early 1960s, Phil left teaching to become the Director of Press Relations for North Park College and Swedish Covenant Hospital. This began a working relationship with Nils Axelson, a man whose ability to lead quietly and effectively inspired loyalty, respect, and warmhearted friendship in Phil for the rest of his life.

Phil loved the hospital, its healing mission, its dedicated staff, and the conversations he could hold in its coffee shop. Many of his most lasting and important friendships arose from his work there. Persons such as Allan Anderson and the late Ralph Varde, both of this church, remained in Phil’s thoughts the remainder of his days.

And Phil loved the College. He cheered for the sports teams, looked forward to choir concerts, and delighted in orchestrating publicity garnering events such as the yearly Santa Lucia program at the Daley Center. Through the college he met his tennis partners and friends, Mel Soderstrom and Jim Lundeen. Though he didn’t work for the college, the late Norm Nelson was a consistent tennis partner and trusted friend.

Phil retired from both the college and the Hospital in 1977. He remained in the North Park community until leaving for health reasons in 1990. Since then, he lived with his daughter Ann and her family in Seattle, Washington.

North Park Church was tremendously important to Phil. This became apparent in the late 1970s when he delivered a “My Thankfulness to God,” speech, as was the custom, at a Thanksgiving morning service. In it he detailed how important this church was to him in the evolving stages of his life. In addition to singing in the choir, Phil served on numerous committees, most importantly the refugee committed, where he worked to sponsor the Vang and Taing families as they immigrated from Indochina. He also very much enjoyed being an usher.

A man of shifting moods, Phil will be remembered for many things. Remembering the best of times, his legacy of spontaneity, kindness, generosity and wit will be sorely missed. As for his darker periods, his experience battling the silent enemy of depression will teach us all to guard against the pernicious disease.

One telling experience in Phil’s life, an event through which his family like to remember him, occurred in June of 1987 as Phil’s wife Doris was dying of cancer. The family had been called together to see her one last time. Everyone was fortunate enough to arrive in time to get a chance to speak with her. On her last night the hospital called to say she would not last long. Phil, Ann, and David rushed to the hospital but arrived shortly after Doris had passed away. Though he was faced with the most difficult loss of his life, Phil remained composed and lead the family in a bedside prayer. Even in the most trying of times, he showed his true colors as a man who believed in the resurrection and the power of prayer. Peace to his memory. — Dave Liljengren