Services Set on Tall Ship for Former Professor

Services will be Sunday for Dr. Phillip A. Adams, a sailor and professor emeritus of biology at Cal State Fullerton, who died July 12 of a heart attack. He was 69.

For 28 years, Adams taught zoology, evolution, entomology and crisis biology at the university. He was an expert in the study and preservation of green lacewings, predators of crop destroying pests.

In the late 1960s, Adams served as a visiting associate professor and curator of insects at Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History.

Before coming to Fullerton, Adams taught at Harvard University, where he received his doctorate, and UC Santa Barbara.

After his retirement in 1991, Adams continued his studies, publishing a catalog of insect species last December in the “Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences.”

An avid sailor, Adams also devoted himself to the preservation of the Argus, a cargo ship built in the Baltic in 1905.

He began volunteering his services to the Orange County Boy Scouts when they acquired the 95-foot ketch in 1972.

“He was a great help to the sea base,” said Bill Mountford, director of the Boy Scouts’ Sea Base in Newport Beach. “It’s a big loss down here.”

Adams, a licensed captain of the Argus, was a self-taught, tall ship mechanic.

He spent most of the last two years restoring the rigging on the tall ship and received numerous awards from the Boy Scouts for his many hours of volunteer service.

Adams, who lived in Yorba Linda, is survived by his brother Joseph.

Services will be at 1 p.m. on the Argus, out of the Boy Scout Sea Base in Newport Beach.

Those planning to attend should contact the Boy Scouts at (949) 642-5031, as the Argus holds only about 40 people. Arrangements will be made for other boats to follow.