Parsons Sun

It was a couple hours before he was expected on center stage at the Carnegie Arts Center, but Arvon Phillips had already donned his tuxedo shirt and slacks.

Using the plastic stem near his mouth, he maneuvered his sip and puff chair that has been a part of his life for 12 years to the living room.

Although he would be before a crowd of community and friends in a short while to be honored as this year's Labette Community College Cardinal Citee, he makes time for company.

"People have always been an important part of my life," he said.

However, he admits, he is not much on large crowds. He enjoys the more intimate company of friends in his home, and invites them to stop by anytime, as he is most always home.

He has pondered the night before him, and his being chosen to receive the Cardinal Citation Distinguished Service Award, an honor bestowed on 34 others before him for their outstanding lifetime contributions to the college, their career fields and to their communities.

"I pulled up the list and looked at the names of all the people that received this before me, and I wondered how I placed among them," Phillips said.

All of them had many accomplishments and an unselfish dedication to their communities. And Phillips does as well. But, he said, he did not reach those accomplishments alone and his dedication was simply offering back what had been given to him.

Born in the country, two miles north of Bartlett, to a farming family, Phillips would know difficult times at a young age, and what it meant to have the support of a community.

His family moved to Oswego for a time and then bought a farm in Angola.

"And that is where our mother died. I was a sixth-grader," he said. "We stayed on the farm two more years and Dad sold out. Basically, since the summer of 1948, all of us - my three sisters and six brothers - were actually from that time on were kind of on our own.

"I'd usually go to Western Kansas every summer to work and make it through the next year. I lived with farmers. That's all I knew at the time," he said. "It was not as difficult as it could have been because of older brothers and sisters and friends."

Many of those friends were teachers, such as Irene Nevins who taught the 21 students in the one-room school house in Angola.

"She was so professional, but she was more than a teacher and I always stayed close to her. She just recently passed away," he said. "The tragedy of her life was she married in the early 40s and in the first part of World War II, she had only been married a couple of years and her husband got shipped to Germany. He was there a very short time and got captured. He spent over four years in a German prisoner of war camp, and when the war was over, he got on a plane to fly home and it crashed and killed him."

Mrs. Nevins and her husband had never had the chance to have children of her own, and all those children in the one-room school house she treated as her own.

"That's why I think she was such an extraordinary lady. She always put other people first," Phillips said. "Then in high school, the teachers were always understanding. They knew my situation. And then in juco, there were some great people - Coach Wallace Swanson, Max Schiefelbusch and Lorene Bailey ... and even Mr. Thiebaud, the president of the college at the time. Those people always went above and beyond.

"In my early work years, at that time, I did not realize those that I had been around had influenced me that much, until much later," he said.

Phillips sipped on the white stem and tipped is chair back, and continued sharing his story between puffs of oxygen delivered to him every five seconds.

After Labette Community College, he went on to attend Pittsburg State University for two years, before serving in the military for three years. When he finished, he attended Washburn University and worked as a recreation therapist for the Kansas Neurological Institute. From there, he began working as director of recreation commissions in Kansas and Missouri, but most notably, he served the Parsons community as recreation and parks director nearly 40 years.

During those years, his son, Tracy said, his dad was in the mix of it all.

"He wasn't unapproachable," Tracy said. "He'd be in there and beat kids at ping pong or whoop 'em in racquet ball. One guy thought Dad was going to throw him out because he didn't have a pass. Dad took him in the office, and gave him a pass. That's the kind of guy he was. There are so many people that have approached me over the years and told me stories about how they appreciated and respected him."

Phillips' work for parks and recreation came to an end when a fall from a roof paralyzed him in October 1994, and the community he had given to was there for him and his wife, Bernice.

"I'm not sure I could have survived this without Bernice and my close friends," he said. "I think it's a great community. It's been good to us. I've lived in other small communities and I've lived in large communities and all those in between, from Boston to California. I enjoyed my time in those places, but this is always a place that I have always felt comfortable."

And, he said, it is the place with the people that are most responsible for contributing to who he became through the years, and the person he is today.

He humbly accepted the Cardinal Citee award just hours later Thursday night before a crowd offering him a standing ovation.

"A lot of what I am is what I learned from a lot of you," he told the crowd. "I don't know that there is anyone present that didn't contribute something to my good life."

More on Phillips' life and contributions to his community is online (http://www.labette.cc.ks.us/pubrel/press_releases/press.htm).