Joe Daniel Phares Obituary - Lubbock Avalanche-Journal

Born in Littlefield on September 6, 1927, Phares left school only seven weeks after turning 16 to join the U.S. Navy in 1943. He served more than two years aboard the U.S.S. Brazos A04 and witnessed the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender in Tokyo Bay, a moment that marked the end of World War II.

After his honorable discharge, Phares built a life in Lubbock around hard work and machinery. He partnered with his brother in the farm equipment manufacturing business Phares & Wilkins before striking out on his own with a tool and die company called Amitco. He married his wife, Ina, in 1956, and the couple raised two sons, Keith and Scott, in the same home Phares would live in for the next seven decades.

For a city built on farming and manufacturing, Phares represented the kind of postwar generation that shaped Lubbock's working economy from the ground up. His decades in tool and die work and farm equipment manufacturing left a mark on the kind of small businesses that once defined the South Plains.

Red Phares watched history end in Tokyo Bay as a teenager, then spent the next 80 years building a life eight thousand miles away in the same Lubbock house.