Phillip H. Eng (1954-1957)

Phil Eng passed away on Oct. 8, 2009. The Spangler website and me personally have lost a wonderful friend  No one, and I mean no one, contributed more to the Spangler web site than Phil since the site's inception in 2005. The stories that man could tell!

He was special!   No question about it!  Take a look in the SeaTales section and you'll see why, 27 stories as only an old salt could tell them.  He's only outdone by Guy Thompson, in that respect.  Phil also put his fair share in the ChatLocker too; in fact it was Phil that came up with the name, "ChatLocker."  The life stories he told that didn't go into the website dwarf those that did.  Phil's major contribution, though, was in the photographic area.   He was the ship's photographer for the Spangler's Cruise Book during the cruise to WESPAC in 1957, and all of those are posted on the website, including a fair number that, for one reason or another, didn't make it into the Cruise Book.  My desire to see the cruise book photos published on the internet led to develpment of the Spangler website.

Phil stepped aboard the Spangler on August 24, 1954 as an ICFN and departed in August 1957 as an IC2. He initially was assigned under the responsibility of Don McGill (another wonderful SpanglerMate who passed away last year).

If ever an enlisted man was proud of his sleeping quarters, it was Phil.  " My space," he said, "was larger than the skippers. I had a chief's locker, and a bunch of half empty spare parts box's to stow my shit in, and I did have a lot of shit! The one thing that I would have loved, and I thought about it a lot, would have been--- A PORT HOLE in the IC room."   The IC Room you might recall was below the water line on the deck below the Crews Mess.

Phil and Del have enjoyed their 15-years of retirement life along a lake near Crossville, TN.   He retired from Xerox Corporation after 34 years of service.   Before moving to Crossville, he and lived in Westland, Brighton and Howell, Michigan.  They had two children, a daughter, Kim, and a son that preceeded him in death.

On learning that my wife Pat and I were getting ready to head east a couple years back and visit the National Archives in Maryland, Phil came to my rescue over a frustrating problem I was having.  He modified and mailed me a tripod for shooting photographs vertically.   Standard tripods are not designed to do that and I had shared a few emails with Phil complaining about it.   I needed something that would enable me to shoot straight down to avoid photographic distortion.   Phil, in his typically ingenious way, took care of that by fabricating a special aluminum connection, one that enable the camera to be mounted beneath the tripod legs in lieu of on top of the tripod as is normally the case.   I ended up shooting over two thousand photographs of deck logs and other item with much greater ease thanks to him.   I'm still in awe over the brass knob he fabricated on his metal lathe as part of the modification.   Beautiful job!