By Buddy Nevins, BrowardBeat.com, for SouthFloridaReporter.com, Nov. 2, 2015 – Civic activist W. Phil McConaghey called himself “The Mongoose.”
He called government “The Cobra.”
“That’s the only animal in the world that can kill a cobra,” he explained to a reporter in 1998. “They’re fast and smart, and I’m dealing with a government body whose venom is often as potent as that of a cobra.”
McConaghey’s Mongoose could never kill “The Cobra” of over-reaching government. That never stopped the pugnacious gadfly, who for more than 40 years battled local government in commission chambers and in court.
During that same period, McConaghey left his imprint on dozens of buildings in Broward County as a leading engineer during the county’s early building boom.
McConaghey, 82, died Friday, according to a one-sentence obituary in the Sun-Sentinel.*
