Obituaries : Philip Alton Adams; Restaurateur

Philip Alton Adams, a longtime bartender and restaurant manager in Oxnard, has died of cancer. He was 60.

Adams, a resident of Ventura County for 50 years, was known for his generous spirit and rapport with customers whom he encountered during a 40-year career working in bars, bowling alleys and inns from Santa Monica to Oxnard.

“He had a personality of being able to deal openly and friendlily with people he didn’t know,” said Patrick Newell, the bar manager at El Ranchito restaurant in Oxnard, where Adams worked for six years during the 1980s.

Adams was born in Middle, Ark., in 1934, the oldest of four children. He moved to California during the Depression when his father, Harold Adams, sought work in Ventura County’s farm fields.

After graduating from Oxnard High School in 1952, he served in the U. S. Army from 1954 through ’56. Adams then attended Ventura College for a year while working as an aide at the Ventura County Medical Center.

He worked for a short time as a cook in an Ojai cafe owned by his mother. When the business closed, he took a job at a Santa Monica bowling alley owned, in part, by Frank Lloyd Wright. Later, he worked at an inn in Malibu and the Wagon Wheel Bowl in Oxnard.

He is survived by his sisters, Judy Adams of Oxnard and Pat McClain of Santa Rosa, and a brother, Ron Adams of Camarillo.

Ventura County obituaries are published free of charge as a public service to readers. Obituaries are based on information provided by cooperating mortuaries.