When a giant oak of a man is felled on an island everyone hears it instantly and feels the loss deeply and personally. Phil Crossman, Vinalhaven writer, raconteur, businessman, and activist, among his many other island roles and occupations, crossed the bar shortly before the turn of the New Year surrounded by family. He was 81.
Crossman’s affectionate nickname on Vinalhaven was “Crow,” bestowed upon him as a teenager, after he grew six inches in less than a year and reminded his island neighbors of the similarly named 6-foot-6 stonecutter who was a certifiable island character.
People from Vinalhaven and from away might have encountered Phil at the ferry delivering or retrieving guests from his motel, the Tidewater, where guests could walk into the motel with no one behind the desk and just take a key with their name on it to sign in. Or you might have encountered him at a town meeting, where he was a selectman, or at civic meetings, land trust events, or singing with his a cappella group Phil ‘n the Blanks. Or you may have read his weekly columns as the “Observer” for Vinalhaven’s Wind, where he was a constant source of rich island observation, lore, and wit.
As a serial author, Crossman artfully dissected the distinctions between island natives and other residents in his book Away Happens, a supremely wry and antic chronicle of island life. “There are only two places,” he wrote, “Here, this island off the coast of Maine and Away. Here, this place, is a small place and Away, everywhere else, is a big place, but make no mistake about it, Here is Here and Away is Not.” Many people, whether they read the book or not, remember its cover, which featured a photograph of a late-middle-aged man standing back-to on the shore of Carver’s Harbor wearing nothing but a life jacket while waving to a departing ferry.
In addition to his many columns over the decades in The Working Waterfront, and contributions to Island Journal, Crossman also collaborated as the keen essayist accompanying Joel Greenberg’s stunning black-and-white collection of photographs in Vinalhaven: Portrait of a Maine Island. Crossman eloquently depicted in writing the souls of the likes of Cowboy Jack Watt, cracking crabs; the prim Finnish matron Jennie Webster; and the thousand-yard stare of boatbuilder Gus Skoog. His description of one young hellion is unforgettable: “From her first toke, she was page-one material, blazing a path of outrage, as she became a mighty warrior in the timeless battle of youth against convention.” The man could write!
During one of Crossman’s countless communitarian efforts, he helped organize the local preservation nonprofit Historic Downstreet, which among other successes raised more than $150,000 to renovate the island’s original fire station. In the course of his fundraising, Crossman visited the reclusive artist Robert Indiana, who owned the adjacent historic Odd Fellows building. Crossman hoped that Indiana might recall his second-story window, which had been smashed by island bullies and subsequently how Crossman, seeing the damage on his way to work, retrieved a ladder, took out the window frame, brought it back to his shop, replaced the glass, repaired the frame, and reinstalled it, without a word of acknowledgement passing between him and the artist for 40 years. Pure Phil.
Crossman’s friends and admirers were legion, and none were particularly surprised when in 2009 he proposed to undertake an expedition no one in Vinalhaven’s 250-plus-year history had thought of. He decided he would walk every foot of the island’s 273-mile crenellated and indented shoreline. Further he took immense pleasure in referring to it as his “circumambulation,” delighting as every single person thus informed had to ask what the word meant. Classic Phil.
A greater undertaking late in Phil’s life was his profound and unshakable commitment to organizing and leading resistance to the current administration in Washington. He threw his big heart into this with everything he could muster—which was a lot—until he was, quite simply, drained. Purest Phil.
Over the years since we founded the Institute in 1983, we have had the vast honor and pleasure of working with a great many people in a huge range of capacities, but we are as-one in all along holding Phil as an absolute epitome of caring and community. We will miss him terribly.
Philip Conkling and Peter Ralston are the founders of Island Institute.
