The Briar Philosopher - Passages

It has been a bit over a week now since we received the news that Phil Curd had passed.

It is still very difficult to put things into words but I’ll try my best.

I’ve written before about Phil and Terrie and how important they have been to my life but it can’t be overstated. I doubt very much that I would be the person I am today without knowing them and my heart is deeply saddened that Phil is no longer with us in this world.

To say that his life made a difference not only to me and my siblings but to the whole of Jackson County would be an understatement. He gave of his time, his knowledge and skill and most definitely his heart to this community. What he and Terrie set in motion with the opening of the first White House Clinic continues to improve the lives of so many people in this county and in this region as well. All of the particulars of that are in the feature story of his life that appears in this week’s edition. Those things are tangible and reflected in pictures. There were so many intangible things about Phil that added a immeasurable quality to the care he gave to his patients, his family and his coworkers through the years.

Phil was a quiet man for the most part. He seemed to keep his feelings close to his vest and didn’t speak much about them. He didn’t have to. He simply lived the respect and care and empathy he felt in ways that I don’t think he could have found the words to express. To my knowledge, Phil Curd never looked down on anyone. He never had about him an aura of arrogance or self-importance. He found everyone and everything interesting, even the children under his care and in his life. This, among other things, made him an extremely rare individual.

He showed uncommon compassion for his patients. He wanted to understand what they were going through and how he could help. He was deeply concerned about the health and well-being of the entire community. He worked diligently to find ways to improve the quality of life throughout Jackson County when it came to healthcare. He would never ever say or do anything that might wound someone's dignity. He and the White House Clinic never turned away a patient but the care wasn’t free. Everyone had to pay something, even if it was just five dollars. In this way, no one's dignity would be wounded. No one walked out of the White House Clinic feeling like their pride was injured. He understood that dignity, honor, honesty, determination, and courage were qualities the people he served possessed, poverty notwithstanding.

Growing up around him and Terrie, I never once felt that he saw our family as anything other than a family he cared about and a family from which he had much to learn. That was his way. He was curious about everyone and everything and never made anyone feel that they were not as valuable as himself or anyone else. Some people wear such an attitude as a costume almost but if you scratch them very deeply, you find out it's just a disguise designed to garner them some benefit from the community. For Phil Curd, it was the truth and it went to the bone. It was said of me recently as somewhat of an insult that I talk the same way to commoners that I do to kings. That may be something I picked up from Phil and from Terrie as well and I’ll never consider it an insult. You didn’t have to be a member of any social class in particular to be considered worth their time and energy. Both of them shaped my worldview immensely and I am forever grateful for the meeting and the time spent with them throughout the years.

In recent months, after his diagnosis was terminal, he still worked diligently with other community members to provide funding through the Curd Family Fund that will make resources more accessible and available to those who are incarcerated in Jackson County. In doing so it was his hope that not so many inmates would return to jail again and again but would find their way out of the seemingly endless cycle of incarceration, release, reincarceration.

It seemed to be at the heart of his philosophy that everyone had something in them that could contribute to building a better community. To Phil, just because you might be a drug addict and a repeat offender of all sorts of criminal acts it didn’t mean that there wasn’t something redeemable about you. He didn’t believe that anyone was ever trash, to be thrown away by society.

His passage from this life and from this world is a deeply wounding thing but the honor and privilege of knowing him will come, in time, to outweigh the pain of losing him. Grief and love so often go hand in hand. It takes time through the grief and tears to realize that the measure of love and the measure of grief are but two aspects of one thing. Had there not been so much love, there would not be so much grief. If anyone in Jackson County deeply deserved our love and our grief, it is Phil Curd. Please keep Terrie and the rest of his family in your hearts as time goes by. Terrie has always been a simply amazing person in her own right, though a dose of introversion has kept her largely out of the public eye. Remember her as you remember him in your prayers. May peace come to her heart.