A short eulogy for Phil Michal Thomas
Decades of advocacy in word and deed
One measure of a life’s influence is how quickly word gets around about a person’s death. The news spread fast on Friday evening and by Saturday morning I even ran into friends at Costco who brought it up. Shock and sadness hit us quickly, particularly since so many people had recently been with him at this or that event. But the realization is still setting in that Phil Michal Thomas is no longer with us.
A eulogy seeks to offer good words about the one we have lost. That is an easy task in one sense because his good works were many. The hard part is selecting a few that illustrate our friend. I take some comfort in knowing that many will offer their own eulogies over the coming days to give us the fullest possible picture.
I knew Phil Michal mainly through his support of PFLAG Nashville and Nashville Black Pride. If that had been the extent of his advocacy, he would have been more than qualified as a hero to me. But it went much deeper and further back.
Though he was born in Nashville and spent his last decades here, Sarah Calise points out that he was part of a great tradition of AIDS/HIV and LGBTQ+ advocacy in New York and Atlanta as well. In a piece written by Laura Valentine, he recalled a striking story of being part of a human chain of protest around a church where the pastor had argued that AIDS was a punishment from God.
When he made his way back to Nashville, he was a battle-tested advocate and an early force in the Tennessee Gay and Lesbian Alliance, Nashville CARES, and many other organizations. It would be hard to calculate how much those of us who serve in the Nashville area’s current organizations owe to Phil Michal and others who knocked down barriers to organizing so that we would have an easier road.
Even his words themselves were actions. He was not someone who simply blurted “hot takes” on this or that issue. His words had force because they embodied thoughtfulness, experience, and commitment. From his memoir novel Panels to letters to the editor of The Tennessean, he proved himself a prophet against heterosexism and cissexism, against racism in our own community and in the wider society, and for justice for all of us. In a February 2024 letter to the editor, he drew upon the late Congressman John Lewis and wrote, “Sometimes, it takes a little good trouble to wake our senses of humanity.”
The aged warrior Nestor frequently lamented in The Iliad: “Would that I were young as then, and my strength unfailing…” (Caroline, Alexander, translator) Though I never heard Phil Michal Thomas make such a complaint because he was too busy living a life of action and contemplation, we might offer that what-if on his behalf. We cannot help but wish he had more years, more strength. We will have to find our way into good trouble without him, but not without his enduring words and actions that have built paths for all of us.