Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

The sudden death of retired attorney and volunteer emergency medical technician Philip Reeves leaves a hole in the Haines Volunteer Fire Department EMS squad that will be hard to fill. "Phil was one of those guys you are glad to have on the team with you," fellow EMT Thom Andriesen said. He was calm, skilled, "rock solid" and responded "at all times to all calls."

Reeves, 65, died Dec.10 at his home of an apparent heart attack following an intense week with the search and rescue mission for the Beach Road landslide victims.

Before settling in Haines in 2015 with wife Nene Wolfe, who has served as a veterinarian here since the late 1990s, Reeves worked in the Alaska Attorney General's office in Juneau. He led a complex case against the trans-alaska pipeline company owners over tariffs charged between 2009 and 2015 that was settled in 2017. "This sort of litigation almost never wins," John Hutchins, an attorney who worked in the AG's office with Reeves said. "Phil saw an issue, he convinced people it was possible, and then he did win it," against all odds, saving the state hundreds of millions of dollars. "Phil had a strong eye for the dollars and cents and a determination to see that the state wasn't ridden over," Hutchins said. Many of his new neighbors and friends on the Haines ambulance crew were unaware that Reeves was even a lawyer.  

In addition to the ambulance crew service, Reeves volunteered at the Southeast Alaska State Fair, the fishermen's solstice barbecue and the Haines ski club. He loved riding his fat-tire bike, hiking, traveling, and hosting dinner parties and music nights with his wife. He played the guitar, ukulele, and sang. "Phil was the cook at our house," Wolfe said, and always made a marinated leg of lamb for Christmas dinner. When she volunteered as a vet for the Iditarod and the Yukon Quest sled dog races, he joined her. In 2016, they canoed 400 miles down the Noatak River and later that year, after friends had to cancel a trip to climb Mount Kilimanjaro, Reeves and Wolfe took their slot.

He was thoughtful and funny, "incredibly well-read" said Wolfe, and "a loveable curmudgeon," when he was working on a case, said attorney Hutchins. His brother Roger, a professor of both physiology and genetic medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said Reeves was one of the most intelligent people he knew. "Phil didn't go around trying to advertise that, but he was really, really smart."

Phillip Reeves was born April 1, 1955 in Des Moines, Iowa, the second of businessman Robert H. Reeves' and homemaker Shirley Harper Reeves' three children. April Fool's pranks were a big part of his life, the family said. He grew up in Dayton, Ohio in a home full of music, good meals (his parents were "foodies" before that was a term) and service (they were Methodists and arts and civil rights advocates.) Reeves' maternal grandfather was the president of several universities, and he and his siblings all earned advanced degrees.

Reeves was a boy scout and as a teenager played Bud Frump in "How to Succeed In Business Without Really Trying," at Centerville High School, where he graduated in 1973. He studied at the University of Indiana and Lewis and Clark Law School, specializing in environmental law. His sister Libby Rognier observed that they were a little surprised at his career path as "Phil always said he wanted to be a minister because then he'd only have to work on Sundays, which was extra funny because he came from a long line of Methodist ministers."

Reeves was fresh out of law school when he drove to Alaska on a whim with a friend and "within about a week had a good job," his brother said. Later Reeves spent more than 10 years as the assistant Kenai Peninsula Borough attorney in Soldotna, where he trained as a firefighter and became an EMT 3. He served as the North Slope Borough Attorney for three years in the mid 1990s, living in Utquiavik (then known as Barrow). He met Nene Wolfe there when she was the borough veterinarian. "He flew to Anchorage and bought a cat so he'd have to see me," she said. They were married on an island off Sitka in May 1998. After a short interlude with Conoco Phillips in Anchorage, Reeves joined the Alaska Attorney General's office in Juneau, first as the assistant AG in the Department of Education, and later in the Division of Oil and Gas.

The Haines Volunteer Fire Department buried him at Jones Point with full, first-responder honors following a parade of emergency vehicles through town on Dec. 14.

Friend Joanne Waterman made his simple pine casket, and Wolfe encouraged friends and colleagues to write a few words on it in colorful waterproof markers. She also tucked in a bottle of his favorite Glen Fiddich single malt scotch and a crystal tumbler.

"Phil was an example for us all to emulate," Mayor Douglas Olerud said. "He didn't look for recognition but went about doing what needed to be done in a thoughtful and efficient manner."

Reeves leaves wife Elizabeth "Nene" Wolfe, siblings Roger Reeves (Ruth Lammert-Reeves) and Elizabeth "Libby" Rognier (Christopher), and nephews Michael (Tessa) Rognier and Justin Rognier.