I’m going to skip the current day sports stories. This blog really isn’t about me.
Way before I ever set foot in a law school classroom, I was a sports junkie. I played. I watched. I read. I lived sports. Not that I didn’t have other interests—I did. But sports was central to my identity. Still is, although I would like to think I expanded my portfolio of life a little bit more in all these years.
I had just graduated from Franklin and Marshall College. My immediate goal was to become a lawyer.
Only one school really wanted me—a fledgling outfit opening its doors to its first full time class in Wilmington, Delaware. In a church which would be retrofitted into classrooms and a library.
I was lumped in with a whole segment of men and a few women who felt law school was their destiny. They simply hadn’t connected to the right school.
The first class of the Delaware Law School was an aggregation of students who were mostly from the Northeast. There were precious few outsiders. And a whole lot of night students.
We knew that the school hadn’t been accredited and that the battle to gain acceptance so we could take our respective bar exams and succeeding the practice of our choice would last the entirety of our time in Delaware. That never deterred us.
I went to Delaware essentially not knowing anybody. I had met a man who would become my roommate for three years because his uncle was my father’s best friend. That’s it.
We didn’t know where to live. Or for that matter, who to live with. We headed blindly into the study of law; our life away from law school as non-directional as it could be. We urgently needed to settle in and be ready for the start of school in October.
Somehow, in the course of meeting students in the same predicament, my new-found friend and I came upon two other duos. All with the same goal. Six Jewish guys looking for lodging.
We were different in many ways. Besides me and my soon-to-be roommate from the Trenton area by way of Bucks County, there was a pair who came from Manhattan and Brooklyn. Then there was the verbose kid from Long Island whose father drove a big car and was the only lawyer-father of the group.
The last one was a guy living in Union Township, New Jersey. He went to Hillside High School. His parents were Holocaust survivors.
His name: Philip A. Ross. Phil was a graduate of Seton Hall University—the best local school he believed he could go to in the area; Rutgers in Newark wasn’t pretty and Kean University was still getting out of its Newark State Teachers College identity.
I was stunned a bit by the fact that a Jewish kid went to a Catholic school. Where he was clearly part of a small minority. I could not have imagined myself in that type of environment for even a short period of time, let alone for four years.
Phil was in fact a Seton Hall loyalist. He bled blue and white. He loved being a Pirate.
He was a bit brash at the beginning. His vehicle was this big, old green and black Camaro. He could talk a little smack every once in a while. After all, he came from the predominantly Jewish Weequahic section of Newark before landing in Hillside and then Union. They seemingly grew them tough in the biggest city of New Jersey.
So this group of strangers thrown into the same predicament paired off. In two bedroom units in Newark, Delaware, miles away from campus—but affordable. Those two bedroom apartments were really almost three—with a small room off of the living room; our trio used it as a study area while Phil made it his abode. Without complaint. And he was by far the tallest one of us as well as the youngest.
Phil with the New York City duo was a good grouping. Our apartment would last as a trio for a year, as the Long Island native married and moved out.
We went to class largely together. To say that our conversations ran the gamut—from classes, the law, individuals, love lives, politics and beyond is to simplify it. It certainly wasn’t dull.
Phil was a copious note taker. I never saw more pages of notebooks filled with line after line of blue ink. I always wondered how he could distill that verbiage into a coherent way to study. I am guessing that was a holdover trait from college. Apparently, it worked just fine for him.
As pubescent lawyers who thought we knew so much (and in reality knew so little) about the law, we agreed to disagree. Phil was in the midst of these theoretical arguments.
After all, he had better training than all of us. Not merely from his upbringing. But a common theme resonated with four members of our group and a much larger segment of the school—sports.
Phil was by far the most avid sports fan. He boasted about his knowledge because he had season tickets—to the New York Jets as a bar mitzvah present. And to the New York Rangers, the sole hockey team in the area when we were high schoolers. He didn’t care too much about baseball; he enjoyed the-then New York Nets almost as much as the championship-level Knicks; and he hated the New York Giants.
Many a weekend Phil would take the train to New York to catch a Jets game followed by a Sunday night Rangers home game. He would return tired, sometimes happy, and ready to head into the rigors of learning our chosen craft.
His love of sports put him in the thick of common area discussions before and after classes. Our school had a heavy Philadelphia bias and Phil would be unafraid to mix it up with the Eagles/Flyers/ Sixers group. There were some really loud disagreements.
Of course, Phil had his attachment to Seton Hall. So much so that he parlayed his love for his alma mater into a long-term gig running juvenile law clinics through the law school. Many lawyers I know were touched in some way through his mentorship.
The connection as part of the faculty allowed him to become a devoted and passionate season ticket holder for Seton Hall basketball. This was the time when SHU became a founding member of the Big East Conference.
His practice with others took him away from where I started with the Public Defender’s office in East Orange. We stayed in touch—all six of us remained in contact in some form in those early years.
Then he took a job with a practitioner in East Orange—literally down the street from my office. We began to have lunch frequently at places like the Bunny Hop, a Newark establishment moved to a mall in West Orange and known for the “Jerry Bomb”—a gigantic steak and onion sandwich on a fresh roll which could melt in your mouth. Ditto, Syd’s, another Newark staple, where the hot dogs were incredible; we would frequently take the trip to the Millburn Mall for those delicacies.
So it was easy to discern that Phil loved his food. Jewish-style more than anything else was his favorite until health considerations curtailed his choice of diet.
In addition to a regular general practice and his Seton Hall work, Phil undertook designated counsel assignments from the Public Defender’s office in Newark and through me. One of his greatest achievements was representing a man on appeal who had been convicted of murder and faced the death penalty.
An additional facet of his persona came from his upbringing. Phil’s father ran a modest dress factory. Many of the employees spoke Spanish. Phil became a very good conversational speaker and could represent Latino clients on immigration and other matters.
Our closeness was significant. I got to know his family; his parents were great to me, inviting me to holiday meals and I actually attended his mother’s graduation from Kean University. I met his cousins, brother and their families.
I also was integrated into his web of friends and faculty allies as well as former students. Some I became very close to as a result of Phil. Nary a person said anything negative about Phil Ross.
I was on the ground floor of his relationship with his wonderful bride, Deborah. A Long Island girl with a streak of independence, the two were a perfect match. She tolerated me pretty well—because of her deep and abiding love for Phil.
I will never forget our going to the Nassau Coliseum for an Islanders game as they moved towards their nuptials. They were disagreeing over a number of things for the wedding and that matured into a disagreement over serving the family-style peas and ultimately a cookie at the game.
Somehow we brokered a peace agreement and the wedding was a marvelous affair. Complete with breakfast and The Sunday New York Times for each guest. No other wedding did anything close to that.
Phil’s biggest impact was getting me to like the Jets and Rangers. To the extent that I had season tickets at MSG for 10 years and I am concluding my 50 years as a Jets season ticket holder this year. Because his slavish devotion to these teams was a love affair.
Phil switched allegiance to the New Jersey Devils and rode the wave when the Devils behind Martin Brodeur were the best in hockey. Today’s team, with Jack and Luke Hughes and Connor Hellebucyk in goal would have thrilled Phil.
Anecdotally, Phil and I had gone to lunch at the Bunny Hop. The Devils were practicing at a rink at the South Mountain Arena. Also in West Orange.
We figured we would unobtrusively sit in and watch practice for a while, then return to work in East Orange. So we entered the seating area very quietly. Other than team personnel and media, there wasn’t anybody else present.
Except that star player Mark Johnson noticed us. He bellowed out to us: “What took you so long? It’s about time you got here!” We were stunned and mortified. Many years later, we still laughed about it.
Phil became a big fan of the University of Virginia’s athletics teams. For that’s where his two children attended college, and their father’s love of sports went with them. How many times did the family (Debbie, too) see the Cavaliers play in NYC then go to Peter Luger’s Steak House to celebrate or commiserate?
I’ve been to more places with Phil than most people go in a lifetime. He taught me where to park at Shea Stadium and save money when the Jets were in Queens. We were together when the Jets played their final game there while the fans tore apart the building for keepsakes, before the team moved to New Jersey, a journey we both gladly welcomed.
When he was given a case which resulted in two very vindictive hearings two days apart by a Cape May judge, we shared the trips together. In a makeshift courtroom inside the Cape May County Airport.
Phil, his wife, and eventually his children resided first in Fort Lee, then in Marlboro, Morganville and lastly in Manalapan. He loved the Jersey Shore and all that Monmouth County could offer. Eventually he purchased a place in Cape May, another location which provided the things he cherished most outside of sports—family, food and the beach. Jersey Proud he was.
Phil and I shared so many life cycle events. Of our own families and of friends. When you are close, this is what happens.
When COVID occurred, in conjunction with my retirement and Phil’s practice in Newark, we saw less of each other. So, too, sadly was the contact between us.
We briefly reconnected over tragedy. When Debbie was fatally struck in April on Route 9, my wife and I made a shiva call. That was the last time I saw or spoke with him.
I had heard the whispers of something being wrong. It hurts that I did not know more.
There is a lot you wish you could have said to someone so integral in your life. To thank him for all the good times and things he offered to me. Even if it became a 50 year obsession with a mediocre football team—he was a loyal fan when NYJ won the Super Bowl behind Joe Namath. Or just inhaling unhealthy yet fun food.
This was a man with passion. He loved life. He loved his family. He shared. He cared. He understood things so many others didn’t as the son of Holocaust survivors. He reached people in a way that others couldn’t.
I am acting on a long-standing desire to see the Jets play on the road. It has more meaning than ever, as I do it in Phil’s memory. This is because Phil and his friends would routinely select an away game and attend. His stories of their exploits made it sound extraordinary.
Same with his trip to see Seton Hall in the Final Four in Seattle and the heartbreaking loss to Michigan in overtime (I never mentioned to him the name Rumeal Robinson, who sank the winning free throws, lest I get a glare). Phil’s adventure was instrumental in my taking my family to the DIII Final Four.
Watching the Jets play Kansas City this weekend is appropriate. Old rivals from the days of the American Football League. Phil’s kind of game. We would have dissected the game in painstaking detail in years gone by.
I am sure he would have had plenty to say about the start of the 2026-27 college basketball season. Seton Hall Head Coach Shaheen Holloway was always one of Phil’s favorite Pirates’ guards. UVA would be in the thick of things in the ACC. Phil just knew.
Phil would have offered his opinions on the NBA, the elections, a restaurant he missed. That’s just who he was.
We’ve lost some of our friends and Phil lost his wife. Now, the first of our group of six is gone. Too soon. We were fortunate to have reached our mid-70’s. I will fondly remember all of the times, from Delaware to NYC to Continental Airlines Arena and every stadium and restaurant we set foot in. Out of sadness we celebrate friendship.
Requiescat in pace, my friend.
