Submitted by: Dan Rich
Arthur V. Philion
South Bend Tribune 11/16/1994
MISHAWAKA - Services will be at 10 a.m. Saturday in St. Joseph Catholic Church for former St. Joseph County councilman and 1963 Mishawaka mayoral candidate Arthur V. Philion, 92, of Niles Avenue, who died about 2 p.m. Friday.
Burial will be in St. Joseph Catholic Church. Friends may call from 2 to 4 and 6 to 8 p.m. Friday in Thallemer-Goethals Funeral Home, where the parish rosary will be said at 3 p.m.
Memorial contributions may be made to Gibault School for Boys, Terre Haute.
Mr. Philion served as the Penn Township-Mishawaka representative on the County Council for eight years from 1958 to 1966 and was elected president of the council in 1964.
Mr. Philion also took one fling at Mishawaka city politics, losing in the 1963 Democratic primary in the mayor's race. Mr. Philion battled against then-incumbent Mishawaka Mayor Joseph M. Canfield in a bitter primary battle. Canifeld won the primary, but with the wounds of the primary still causing a Democratic split, Republican Margaret Prickett captured the mayor's office that fall.
He served on the county Tax Adjustment Board for 10 years from 1956-66. In 1966 he won the chairmanship of the board by the flip of a coin. When the first secret ballot showed Mr. Philion and Charles Mertins, a South Bend businessman, had each received three votes, Mertins suggested the coin toss. Mertins called tails and it came up heads.
Born Sept. 16, 1902, in Mishawaka, he graduated from Mishawaka High School in 1920. While there he played basketball for the Maroons, as they were called before becoming the Cavemen. That team beat the University of Notre Dame Preps on Nov. 29, 1919, and Feb. 7, 1920.
In 1932, he married Lisette Coster at Eagle Lake. She died in 1988. They had no children. He is survived by several cousins.
He retired in 1973 after more than 40 years in the retail business in Mishawaka. He started Philion's Floor Covering Shop in 1937. Previously, he was associated with others in a retail furniture business.
He was director of the Mishawaka Chamber of Commerce from 1946-49.
Joining the Mishawaka Council of the Knights of Columbus in March 1920, he served as the chief deputy of the state Department of Indiana Jurisdiction, K. of C. for two years, 1968-70.
He served for many years on the board of the Gibault school in Terre Haute, a state project of the Knights of Columbus. He was president of the board in 1970, during the golden jubilee of the home.