Brad Phillips, booster of Alaska tourism, dead in Seattle at 84

SOUTHCENTRAL: He's credited with opening Prince William Sound.
By ELIZABETH BLUEMINK
Brad Phillips, a founding father of Southcentral Alaska's tourism industry, died Monday in Seattle.
Phillips, 84, created the first cruise tours in Prince William Sound in the late 1950s. He also served as a state senator and helped lead efforts to market the state as a major tourist destination.
Phillips founded Phillips Cruises and Tours, which remains one of Prince William Sound's popular glacier cruise tours. He sold the business six years ago, but as recently as last summer he still spent time helping with the cruises.
"It's almost like the passing of an era with him gone," said Bob Neumann, who bought the business from Phillips.
Phillips is credited with introducing the first catamarans ever used in the United States to carry tourists. "He wanted to go faster and see 26 glaciers in a day," said Matt Nichols, a Washington state boat builder who traveled with Phillips to Australia to see the catamarans being built there. On a napkin, the two friends signed a deal for Nichols to build the first of several catamarans Phillips later used to transport Alaska tourists, Nichols said.
"The guy was willing to gamble," Nichols said.
The smooth-sailing catamarans eventually caught on throughout Alaska, Hawaii and the Lower 48. In the 1990s, state officials tested one of Phillips Tours' vessels, the Klondike Express, still used today, before deciding to build the state-owned fast ferries, which are also catamarans, Nichols said.
Not all of Phillips' gambles paid off. He launched a high-speed catamaran, the M/V Klondike, for Yukon River tours, but it had problems getting stuck in ice and mud. The company also pulled out of cruise tour expansion to Tracy Arm in Southeast Alaska.
Family and friends credit Phillips for working hard to open the tunnel between Portage and Whittier to car traffic. That tunnel opened in 2000.
Phillips served in the Army Air Corps as a pilot before moving to Alaska. He finished a college degree at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, worked at a placer mine and was elected for a couple terms to the Anchorage city council. He got a law degree, built a hotel and an insurance agency in Anchorage. He served in the state Legislature from 1961 to 1971, including a stint as Senate president.
But tourism was his biggest legacy, friends and family members said.
"I think more than anything he enjoyed telling people about the place he loved," said his daughter Toi Phillips of New York City.
He was one of the three Alaskans -- Chuck West and Jim Binkley are the other two -- who helped Alaska's tourism industry get off the ground, said Stan Stephens, who owns a competing glacier cruise tour in Prince William Sound.
"Brad is the one who opened up Prince William Sound," Stephens said.
Phillips survived the deaths of two wives. He remarried again several months ago.
A memorial service is planned for 2 p.m. next Tuesday at the Holy Family Cathedral in Anchorage.

Find Elizabeth Bluemink online at adn.com/contact/ebluemink or call 257-4317.