This brief note had its genesis over thirty years ago when, along with my now deceased husband, I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Phillips at a conference in San Francisco in December of 1966. He had just given the Econometric Society's Walras-Bowley Lecture. For some reason or another he was standing all alone in the lobby of the hotel - casually watching the world go by would, I think, describe it fairly accurately. Anyway, I had the temerity to introduce myself. He was charming. We visited with him a total of six or eight hours on at least three different occasions - once in the lobby, once in his room, and once in ours. He was a most interesting person, and a very pleasant ‘regular guy’. There was not the slightest hint of condescension. He chatted and joked as if we had been friends for years. A very impressive person, not just as an economist, but as a man.

Of course, I'm not reconstructing from thirty years ago without help. In 1979 I put down some of these thoughts as the preface to a paper on ‘Mr Phillips and His Curve’. And that is jogging my memory now. In any event, most of the conversations were not about economics - we talked about children, his and ours, education, Australia, New Zealand, the American Midwest, all sorts of things.