His life was one of service to his family, community and country. Phil was famously cheerful, sociable, optimistic and pleasant. He was grateful for his life, and appreciative of small things every day.
Phil was born in Chicago, Ill., in 1924, to Peter Amos and Mabel Carlson Reinertsen. His ancestors on both sides of the family immigrated from Norway. One grandfather was a Lutheran minister, traveling to small new settlements in the Dakota territories, and the other grandfather started a general store to serve farmers in Iowa. Phil excelled in school and graduated from Hyde Park High School. At one time he played in three different basketball leagues in Chicago, and was high scorer in one of them.
On his 18th birthday, during World War II, Phil signed up to join the Navy. He was sent to officers’ training school at Dartmouth College, from which he later graduated after the war (class of ’46). During the war, he served as a lieutenant junior grade, navigation and gunnery officer, on an LST (Landing Ship, Tank) in the Pacific. He was involved in many landings on islands, where he would at times be one of the first people on shore, signaling to tank operators the path they could take over the crest of the beach.
In the summer of 1945, with his ship scheduled for long-overdue repairs in California before the final push of the war, he communicated with his fiancee, Martha Ruth Smalley, with whom he had gone to high school and who had just graduated from Beloit College. She took a train to meet him and they were married on July 14th in San Francisco. They were happily married for 50 years until her death in 1996.
After the war and completing his degree at Dartmouth College, Phil and Martie decided on an adventure and traveled to Sweden where Phil did postgraduate studies in economics at the University of Stockholm. He then took a post with the Marshall Plan for European recovery at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm. While in Sweden, they made many friends, learned Swedish, met Eleanor Roosevelt at an Embassy reception, and traveled around Europe on a tandem bicycle. Phil was offered a promising future in the diplomatic corps, but he and his wife wanted to return to the United States and raise a family.
Back in Chicago, Phil completed a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Chicago while working several jobs. The couple’s children, Laura, Barbara, and James were born in Chicago and Evanston. The family then moved to West Hartford, Conn., and then to Wilton, Conn., where Phil lived from 1970 to 2009. He worked as a senior economist at IBM Corporate Headquarters in Armonk, N.Y. Among other responsibilities, he studied energy markets and Latin American economies, and he took several business trips to South America and Mexico.
Phil and Martie loved birdwatching, both in their backyard and in trips around their state, the Eastern shore, Nebraska, Scotland, and Alaska. Phil was a very active father, always putting his family and children first. He and his wife both sang and read to their young children, and later would play board and card games with them for hours at a stretch. Even after his children were grown, everyone would congregate for holidays and whenever they could. For 42 years the growing family would go on summer vacation together to their well-loved Nantucket Island. One year Phil took his grandson on a mailboat trip around the fjords and up the coast to the far north of Norway.
Phil and his wife were both active community volunteers. Phil’s public service included over 30 years on the town of Wilton’s retirement board, and board roles, including terms as president, for the PTA, Wilton Library, United Way, local Audubon Society, and Kiwanis. One year he served as Grand Marshal of the Wilton Memorial Day parade.
In recent years, Phil moved to Bath, Maine, to be close to family. The family wishes to thank their friends and the staff members of Hearthside Senior Assistance and Neighbors for their loving care of their father.
Phil is survived by his children, Laura Ruth Meagher and her husband Thomas Meagher, Barbara Lee Reinertsen and her husband Terry Nordmann, and James Eric Reinertsen and his wife Helen Michael, and by his beloved grandchildren, Daniel Robert Meagher and his wife Michelle Chowdhury Meagher, Jessica Ruth Meagher, Jane Elizabeth Nordmann, and Kai Owen Michael Reinertsen. He is also survived by his brother, John Reinertsen, and numerous nieces, nephews, and their children.
A memorial service will be held at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, 330 Maine St., Brunswick, at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013. Charitable contributions in his memory can be made to United Way of Mid Coast Maine, 34 Wing Farm Parkway, Bath.
Arrangements are by Daigle Funeral Home, 819 High St., Bath. Condolences may be made online at www.DaigleFuneralHome.co m.
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