In the 1980s, Montgomery attorney Julian McPhillips, Jr. and his wife Leslie bought the old Fitzgerald house in Montgomery’s Cloverdale district. It’s the home where Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald lived when Scott wrote his novel “Tender is the Night.”
In 1987, the McPhillips couple founded and opened the F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum in the Fitzgerald home. It is the only Fitzgerald museum in the world.
April 12 was the celebration of the 100th anniversary of Scott Fitzgerald’s blockbuster novel, “The Great Gatsby.” Montgomery Gatsby fans celebrated one century of Gatsby at the museum and home the McPhillips had bought and nurtured into their present state. One celebrant was missing. Julian McPhillips had died that day at age 78.
The McPhillips wanted the Fitzgerald literary and social legacy to live on in Montgomery. The Fitzgerald couple’s connections to Alabama were many. Scott Fitzgerald was stationed at Maxwell Field. He met vivacious young Montgomery socialite Zelda Sayre, a daughter of Alabama Supreme Court Justice Anthony Dickinson Sayre. Zelda was hard to catch, but Scott did it.
The couple married and moved into a home on the edge of the Cloverdale neighborhood, 919 Felder Avenue. While living there, Scott wrote his next successful novel, “Tender is the Night.”
After the Fitzgerald couple left Montgomery for a Roaring Twenties-style odyssey of traveling and writing, the Montgomery home was rented to various folks. It appeared to be nothing special in the classic upper-class neighborhood. Many Montgomerians forgot that it had been the Fitzgerald home during a formative time of their lives.
Julian McPhillips did not forget. He had been successful as an attorney and real estate investor. He used some of his earnings to buy and refurbish the Fitzgerald home. He collected Fitzgerald items, especially those with a connection to their Alabama years. In 1987, he opened the Fitzgerald Museum in the house that he had bought. It is only a few doors from the McPhillips home.
Julian McPhillips’ life journey was almost as interesting and varied as Fitzgerald’s. His father, Julian McPhillips, Sr., was an Episcopal priest. Julian Jr. was born in Birmingham but raised in Cullman. He went to the Ivy League’s Princeton University on a wrestling scholarship. He was an All-American wrestler, Eastern AAU Wrestling Champion, and a finalist in tryouts for the 1972 Olympics.
He practiced law on Wall Street from 1971-75, but that was never his life’s calling.
Coming back to Alabama, he worked as an assistant attorney general from 1975 to 1977. In 1978, he ran for the open seat of Alabama attorney general, losing to Charlie Graddick.
He opened a Montgomery law firm in 1978 that became McPhillips and Shinbaum. That’s where he was when he learned how to file taxpayer lawsuits. He represented dozens of Alabama citizens with various complaints against state and local government agencies.
Those stories of “The people vs. the government” formed the basis of a 2000 book about McPhillips’ life, “The People’s Lawyer” by Carroll Dale Short.
While working in the law practice, assisting the Fitzgerald Museum and managing real estate, McPhillips set aside time for his church life. He was a leader in Christ the Redeemer Episcopal Church since 1981, helped found Holy Spirit Anglican Church and served on the board of St. James School.
McPhillips was an outspoken pro-life advocate. He founded Alabama Lawyers for Life. During his lifetime, he met people whose lives he had saved by assisting their mothers in going through with unplanned pregnancies. In his eternal life, he said he expects to meet those babies he was unable to save.
The Fitzgeralds will be remembered in Alabama. So will Julian McPhillips.
Jim ‘Zig’ Zeigler writes about Alabama’s people, places, events, groups and prominent deaths. He is a former Alabama Public Service Commissioner and State Auditor. You can reach him for comments at [email protected].
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