Philip Burton; Welsh Mentor of Richard Burton

Philip Burton, the Welsh teacher who mentored the son of a coal miner and helped mold him into one of the world’s top actors, is dead at age 90.

Burton, the surrogate father of Richard Burton, died Jan. 28 at the Heart of Florida Hospital. He had lived in Key West for 14 years before moving to a central Florida nursing home in 1993.

The elder Burton was a writer, actor, director, professor, Shakespeare scholar and former president of the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.

He met the future Richard Burton while teaching in a poor mountain village in Wales, where the teen-ager had been sent to live with a relative after his mother died. Richard Burton was the 12th of 13 children of his biological parents.

The future actor changed his last name from Jenkins to Burton so that his mentor could get him into Oxford University and launch him on his stellar career.

The actor’s death devastated the elder Burton, but he enjoyed talking about his protege.

“He came into my life in 1943 and went out of it in 1984,” Burton once said. “Despite his faults . . . I remember Richard with pride in his best achievements and with gratitude for a fulfilling paternal relationship that lasted over 40 years and still remains deeply within me.”

He remembered that the young man did not come across as overly impressive when he first met him.

“He was chubby,” the elder Burton recalled, “and he had the most dreadful speaking voice. His English, moreover, was thick with Celtic overtones that made it almost incomprehensible.”