PHILLIP RENARD RITCHERSON

This is one cool guy who taught me how to put peanuts in grape soda!
Don’t fly too close to the sun, now!

Phill was my brother. We weren’t born from the same mother, but my biological brother was much older than me and on the other side of the world by the time I started going to school. So, I bonded with the kid who always had something funny to say and was always willing to do anything that would make life more interesting.
He became my brother well before he became the class hero in 4th grade, when Mrs. Hammond moved his desk to the front of the room next to hers, primarily to keep him from disrupting the class from the back of the room. After realizing that all our attention was still focused on him, she eventually sent him back to the ranks, now elevated to the status of classroom god.
He was my brother when we started our musical adventures as The Chosen Few, and remained so through all our separate and collaborative artistic journeys. He moved in with my family after moving to San Francisco and became “Uncle Phill” to my daughter.
I was not his first friend, or his first brother, but I remain one of those who will always remind people, as he always did, that it’s Phill with two L’s and that his dad was THE man.