For Stone Phillips, a Focus on the Home Front

Former network news correspondent Stone Phillips, center, with his parents, Vic and Grace Phillips

Originally, Stone Phillips told me, he intended to shoot a kind of home movie.

His parents, after deliberating with their three children for a year, were about to leave their independent living apartment in St. Louis for a similar one in North Carolina, near their daughter’s home. She would supervise their care as their mother’s dementia progressed.

“I wanted to chronicle the move,” Mr. Phillips, 59, the former network news correspondent and anchor, told me. “And I wanted to capture her before the dementia became too advanced.”

So as Grace and Vic Phillips, then 88 and 92, began saying their goodbyes to their many local friends and neighbors, fellow church members, even that nice lady at the bank, their youngest child kept his camcorder rolling and asked lots of questions.

The elder Phillipses had lived in St. Louis for decades. She’d taught school; he’d been a chemical engineer at Monsanto. Leaving would be wrenching. “If that’s what you think is best, I’ll go with the program,” Grace Phillips says onscreen, bravely trying to conceal confusion and anxiety beneath relentless sunniness. “It’s going to be a whole new chapter.”

At this point, the handwriting had been on the wall for many months. She was already experiencing memory loss. Her husband, who no longer drove, would have had trouble taking care of her on his own. She’d recently taken one of his blood pressure medications by mistake, passed out and wound up at the hospital. Their children lived in North Carolina, Wisconsin and New York. It was time.

“Even as she reluctantly consented, it was kind of heartbreaking,” Mr. Phillips said. “It was difficult for them and for us; an unsettling process” — but one, he knew, that many families were experiencing. “The more the story unfolded, it occurred to me it could be shared.” His family consented.

The resulting documentary, “Moving With Grace,” has been shown by 20 public television stations around the country since its debut on the St. Louis affiliate almost a year ago. WNET in New York will air it on Sunday, April 20, at 7 p.m. KCTS in Seattle and KYVE in Yakima, Wash., will show it on May 11 — Mother’s Day — at 2 p.m. Distributed by American Public Television, it’s likely to pop up on other stations in coming months.

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For Stone Phillips, a Focus on the Home Front