Phillips was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth Congresses, and did not seek renomination for Congress in 1926. While in Congress, he was a bitter opponent of Prohibition.
He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Republican nomination for Governor in 1926, 1930, and 1934.
Post Congress
After his service in Congress, he resumed his former occupation and was president of the Phillips Gas and Oil Co., serving for forty-four years.[5] He was also a director of the Butler Consolidated Coal Co., and the Pennsylvania Investment and Real Estate Corp., of Butler, Pennsylvania.[4]
Personal life
Phillips was married to Alma Janet Sherman (1882–1945). Alma was the daughter of Roger Sherman, a noted lawyer in Western Pennsylvania, and Alma Caroline (née Seymour) Sherman. Together, they were the parents of six children, five of whom lived to maturity:
Katherine Phillips (b. 1910), who married Lucien Gerard van Hoorn, the Dutchchargé d'affaires to Austria and Hungary, in 1932.[9] She later married British doctor Frederick L. Rutgers in 1942.[10][11]
Alma Phillips (1913–1913), who died in infancy.
Margaret Sherman Phillips (1914–1990), who married Augustus Craig Succop in 1934.[12]
Roger Sherman Phillips (1922–1969), who married Virginia Dickson (1922–2011) in 1943.[14] He later married Jeannie Kay DeKlyn (1938–2008), a daughter of Dr. Ward Benedict DeKlyn.[15]
After the death of his first wife in 1945, he remarried the following year to Greta W. Schoenwald.[3] Greta, a mezzo-soprano soloist,[16] was a faculty member at Bethany College in West Virginia from 1955 to 1958.[17]
He died at his mansion, Phillips Hall, on Butler Plank Road in Penn Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania on January 2, 1956.[4] After a funeral at the North Street Church of Christ, where he was a member, he was buried in North Cemetery in Butler, Pennsylvania.[5]
