The voice of Phil Irwin will be greatly missed
Remembering Rappahannock land steward Phil Irwin
“He will live in our memories as we drive and see how well our viewshed and environment has been protected because of his commitment and work,” wrote a friend.
Phil Irwin, we have little doubt, was smiling down on the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors meeting Monday night, where his customary wicker chair sat empty for once, draped in black mourning cloth.
For months on end, until his untimely passing last Thursday, Irwin had pleaded with county o cials to adopt without further delay the long overdue 2020 Comprehensive Plan. Fine-tune it, he encouraged, but do so in subsequent months and years. A working document, he proposed, kept current with the times.
He knew of what he spoke.
It so happens that shortly a er he founded the Rappahannock League for Environmental Protection (RLEP) in 1970, Irwin invited a landscape architect from the University of Virginia to Rappahannock County “to talk about comprehensive planning.”
“We were involved with the concept of comprehensive planning long before it was required in the state,” Irwin would recall decades later. “I guess we were the rst ones to start talking about it — here in Rappahannock County.”
Phil Irwin: Father of the county comprehensive plan.
“How sad that he didn’t live to see the new comprehensive plan adopted,” David Konick, chair of the Rappahannock County Planning Commission, reacted upon learning of Irwin’s death. “He cherished Rappahannock County and was dedicated to preserving it.”
The best possible tribute to Irwin, he added, would be for the BOS to adopt the comp plan “on Monday without further delay.”
And so they did, going a step further on its opening page in memorializing Irwin’s “unwavering voice for the protection of Rappahannock County's land and beauty.”
Without a doubt, Irwin for over a half century was the chief protector of everything Rappahannock. In 1972, he became the rst property owner in the county to apply for his land to be placed under conservation easement, a request the state approved in 1973. While the president of RLEP he became regional director of the Virginia Farm Bureau and committee E! member for both Rappahannock County Farmland Preservation and the Agricultural Forestal District. All the while advising the county government on ways to attract tourism. Somewhere he squeezed in 25 years as chief of morning broadcasts for the Voice of America, and nally catching his breath he became innkeeper of his prized Caledonia Farm - 1812. Where down in the basement of the stately federal-style stone house ran the “New Caledonia Central Railroad.”
“Railroads are my favorite topic, of course, being a descendant from a great line of railroad people,” Irwin once observed as featured guest of The Train Show. “Our model railroad here at Caledonia Farm is rather famous because it’s the only one in North America to go through a threefoot thick solid-stone historically designated wall.
“I built that tunnel 25 years before I nally laid track through it!” he recalled of the feat.
Irwin was so highly regarded within the model train circuit that he was crowned the world’s “Model Train Ambassador No. 220.” When asked which of the myriad hats he wore throughout his life was his favorite, he replied: “The engineer hat.”
He was an expert on all things historic — “Caledonia Farm is a National Registered Historic Landmark,” he educated of the Rappahannock bed and breakfast that “sits on the original Lord Fairfax grant of 1735” — and he kept up to date on all events current.
It was extremely rare he didn’t have something to o er during the public comment period of county government proceedings, every word meant to be constructive. And he was knowledgeable enough that if county o cials couldn’t recite the code he unabashedly stood up and did it for them.
Irwin, noted Konick last Friday, attended more county government meetings since the early 1970s than “anyone else dead or alive.”
He knew inside out the law of the county and country, the Constitution of the United States, which he always carried with him in his sweater pocket. As Rappahannock County High School Principal Jimmy Swindler remembered, Irwin “called me every year to ensure every student got a pocket Constitution.”
His hearing failing of late, nothing irked the broadcast veteran more than the sound quality of local government meetings, to the extent that he would constantly scold o cials to “speak into the microphone!”
Without question Irwin was always heard, loud and clear.
In a 2016 interview with RLEP President Rick Kohler, Irwin was asked what a future Rappahannock County might look like.
“I’d like to see the future from wherever I am going to be at that time to be much the same as it is today,” he replied. “Growth is inevitable. We are going to grow, there’s no way around it. It’s necessary in our free enterprise system, our society, to grow. But I want Rappahannock to grow slowly, I want it to grow responsibly …
“And I think we are going to remain the last [ Virginia county] to get a tra c light.”