Philip Burnham, R I P

National Review, June 10, 1991 by L. Brent Bozell

PHILIP BURNHAM, who died at his home in Tucson, Arizona, last month at age 88, was James Burnham's brother: but more. Philip was once an editor of Commonweal magazine, as James was of NATIONAL REVIEW. So they were not public allies. Indeed, Philip was to be remembered at Commonweal for his leading role in breaking the Catholic pro-Franco front in American commentary on the Spanish Civil War-a victory some of his later friends would lament. Philip resigned from Commonweal in 1949 when he came to believe his increasingly conservative views were at odds with the other editors'.

Philip Burnham was now ready to strike out from the East, and in the early Fifties he became director of the Junipero Serra book shop in the San Francisco Bay area. This work lasted five years-until he was ready, at last, to begin his career.

While James was writing enviable prose for NR, Philip was publishing practically nothing at all. Instead, he began giving himself to friends and strangers as-how else to describe his vocation?-an elegant and intellectually polished Good Samaritan. For instance: there was a time when, every day, he invited two or three Tonoho O'odham Indians to take coffee and food, bringing them in and chatting with them as friends. Or there was his work for thirty years with the Tucson St. Vincent de Paul Society: taking food and himself to the poor. Meanwhile, there was always a bed at his house for travelers like George Shuster, Will Herberg, Anne Fremantle, Dorothy Day, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn.

Like the Good Samaritan, Philip Burnham did good because the Great Commandment required it-because he loved God and Man.