Election loss ends 40-year run as Fayette County coroner for Dr. Phillip Reilly

Sudden, unexpected deaths and grieving families have been the concern of Dr. Phillip E. Reilly for four decades.

Next month, the 89-year-old Democrat will end his 40-year tenure as Fayette County’s elected coroner, having lost to a Republican challenger in the Nov. 7 election.

“You put a priority on the families of the deceased, and all the rest will fall into place,” Reilly said of his role as coroner. “I’m in the stress business. I try any way I can to reduce the stress other people are feeling.”

Reilly’s office gets called out to about 900 deaths in a year’s time. About two-thirds of those cases require more extensive investigation, he said.

“Those we need to move on and help the family through them,” he said. “We need to show compassion to people who are under stress on the worst day of their lives.

“If there’s any suspicion in the least of some criminal conduct being involved, it makes it important that we get everything in place that will support the work of the district attorney and police.”

Reilly has been concerned by the increase of drug overdose deaths in the county, which totaled 77 last year.

Preventing overdoses is a difficult challenge, he said, because of the increasingly strong illicit substances brought into the area by drug dealers.

He’s thankful for the overdose reversal drug Narcan. “It’s saved countless lives,” he said.

Reilly has never experienced a mass casualty event that has exceeded his office’s capacity to handle about a half-dozen deaths in a 24-hour period, but the possibility has remained on his mind.

He said he and fellow coroners in Pennsylvania’s southern-tier counties have “a little black cloud” hanging over them. That cloud is the risk of a major airplane crash, Reilly said, because of the many commercial flights that pass overhead, roughly following above the Mason-Dixon line.

“It’s almost a daily concern,” he said. “You think, ‘When is it going to be our turn?’ I’ve been through every disaster exercise I could get to.”

Reilly recalled a cargo plane crash near Farmington that resulted in the death of four people on board but could have created a much worse biological disaster.

The wreckage, he said, was scattered for over a mile. That included hundreds of the type of Petri dishes that often are used to grow cultures in disease research.

“Thank heavens they were brand new dishes that were being shipped to some lab,” he said. “We squeaked through on that one.”

Reilly expressed pride in the staff he’s attracted to the coroner’s office, including three registered nurses. “They’re immensely helpful, talking with the families and the doctors and getting the background information,” he said.

Reilly was “very disappointed” by his failure to win a new term as coroner, which he said he pursued to help bolster the slate of Democrats running for Fayette County offices. According to unofficial results, Reilly received 13,398 votes compared to 15,049 for his GOP challenger, chiropractor Bob Baker.

In light of a recent shift that has given Republicans a 4,000-voter registration edge in the county, Reilly believes he may have invested too little in promoting his campaign.

“I thought my experience would carry the day,” he said.

Reilly said one of his final goals as coroner will be to make the transition as easy as possible for his successor.

For most of his time as coroner, Reilly also has treated patients as a physician in emergency or family medicine.

He initially became interested in serving as coroner through his close dealings as an emergency room physician with the late longtime coroner, Dr. Ralston McGee. When McGee died in office, Reilly said, he felt his experience could bring something to the role of coroner.

Reilly recently stepped back from his duties as a physician following the arrival of the covid-19 pandemic.

“When covid-19 flared up and the offices were cut back, I was out of family practice for a year and a half,” he said. In the summer of 2022, “I thought it was time to retire.”