Adobe board president retires after 40 years

By Michael Picarella Acorn Staff Writer

Ray Phillips

After 40 years as president of the Leonis Adobe Association Board of Directors, Ray Phillips, who just turned 83, has retired. But he’ll remain a board member.

In 1963, Phillips discovered that the Leonis Adobe site on Calabasas Road was to be torn down. According to Calabasas City Councilwoman Lesley Devine, Phillips convinced the owner of the Adobe at that time to donate the land so the Adobe could be declared a historical landmark. Phillips then helped raise money and turned it into the Leonis Adobe that exists today.

"The reason I retired is because I finished 40 years as president of the Leonis Adobe Association, and at 83, I figured that was just long enough," Phillips said in an interview after the recent event in his honor. "It went by like a flash. Looking back on it, it was all such a wonderful experience."

Phillips knew of the Adobe since the 1940s, he said.

"I took pictures of it in 1948," Phillips said. Some years later, the Adobe was falling apart due to the age of the building and vandalism, he said, and it was going to be sold and turned into a shopping center.

"At that time, I read a little article in the newspaper saying that there was going to be a luncheon held in Encino for people who were interested in saving the Leonis Adobe," Phillips said. "I went to the luncheon and a few weeks later I was a member of the board of the Leonis Adobe Association. . . . Two months later, I was president and I was president for the next 40 years."

It took Phillips and others about 10 years to restore the Leonis Adobe, he said. The site has since been recognized numerous times for excellence in preservation and attracts more than 10,000 visitors a year.

"We are one of the favorite destinations of school tours and we have school tours five days a week, the entire school year," Phillips said. "Sometimes we have 100 school children a day. And it’s very gratifying to know that the children are seeing something that is well done and properly done."

Phillips added, "Part of the drawback in knowing as much as I do is when I go into other restorations and see things wrong. It upsets me," he said.

The Leonis Adobe is time-period accurate, down to the hinges and even the screws, Phillips said. And he expects the same of other historical landmarks, he said.

"About two weeks ago, I was up in Fremont," Phillips said. "There are a number of historic houses and I saw Phillips-head screws in almost every darned one of them."

Phillips-head screws weren’t invented until about 1950 and the places Phillips visited were originally constructed about 100 years before that, he said.

"It’s such a simple thing, but every single door (in some of these places) was put on with a dozen or so Phillips-head screws and they’re all wrong," Phillips said.

At the recent event to honor Phillips in his retirement, several spoke of his accomplishments and his attention to historical detail.

"For 40 years, (Phillips) has promoted California history, saved unique examples of history in not only the property but with the details of historical household items displayed at the Adobe," Devine said.

Phillips’s eye for detail might lend you to believe that he was an historian. He’s not.

Phillips was an insurance broker. He said the problem with being an insurance broker was also a plus for the Leonis Adobe.

"If you don’t work, you don’t eat," Phillips said of his work as a broker. "Nobody is paying you a wage. But on the other hand, if nobody is paying you a wage, then they’re not expecting you to be at work at any particular time and to stay until any particular time."

As a result, Phillips spent much of his morning hours with workmen as they restored the Adobe.

"I would stay out there with the workmen so I would make sure they knew what they were going to do for that day. Then I would head back to Los Angeles to my office and work," Phillips said. He did this day after day for months, he said. He added that he enjoyed every moment of the work.

Phillips’s interest in history goes back to when he was 10, he said.

"When I was 10 years old, I talked my parents into letting me go back to a little town in north Texas where my grandparents lived and spend the year with them," Phillips said. "About eight miles out in the country from outside of this little town was my great grandparents’ home. It had started out in 1863 as a log cabin."

Phillips thought the history of that home was fascinating. From then on, history—and more importantly—the history of buildings became interesting to Phillips, he said.

Later in life, Phillips became president of Heritage Square in Los Angeles, which is a group of old buildings that were moved to a location just off the Pasadena Freeway. It was after that when he became involved with Leonis Adobe.

Some of the gifts given to Phillips during the recent event that honored him were his gavel used at board meetings and a history book of the Leonis Adobe.

"His heart and soul is in this museum," said Tammy Ennis of Leonis Adobe. "He’s dedicated his life toward history. . .With his leadership and the board’s, they’ve made the museum what it is today."

The new president of the Leonis Adobe Association board of directors is Don Adams.

For more information about Leonis Adobe, please call (818) 222-6511.