LORD’S PLACE HELPS LOCAL MEN
Ex-football star gives life lessons to former inmates and homeless.
Calvin Phillips has a story to tell. At age 3, while living in Richmond, Va., he was kidnapped by his mother, Dorothy Miller, and taken to Boynton Beach.
“That was the most difficult thing as a child for me,” said Phillips, now 53. “Did I know I was being kidnapped? No. My father went off to work, we lived on a farm in Richmond and I was later told she didn’t want to stay.”
Phillips who went on to star as a wide receiver at Lake Worth High School and West Virginia University in the 1980s, didn’t see his father or five brothers for 40 years.
“I never got a chance to see that father-son thing,” he said softly. “I never played ball with my father and have those conversations that fathers and sons have.”
Miller had a drinking problem, so Phillips lived with Myra Anderson, a single mother raising seven kids of her own. Anderson became Phillips’ mom.
“She took me in and made me part of her family,” Phillips said. “She saw something in me.”
But that troubling experience hasn’t stopped Phillips from being a do-right father figure to the men at The Lord’s Place Men’s Campus, a nonprofit dedicated to breaking the cycle of homelessness by providing services to men, women and children.
Phillips is the director of housing and works with men who were homeless or in prison. He’s been there seven years.
“All my life, I’ve worked in social services,” he said of the more than nearly three-decade stretch. “I tried to get out and when I went to college, I wanted to be a business guy. I didn’t know if this was my pitch or if it was something I really wanted to do. But the more I worked in it, I gravi-
tated toward people.”
Wade Martin, who has been in The Lord’s Place program for three years, has praise for Phillips, who at 6-feet-2, shows an athletic build.
“He works with you, he listens to you,” said Martin, 51. “I was coming out of prison off the chain. I didn’t understand nothing. Didn’t want nothing. But Calvin showed me a path ... and said it would be all right.”
James Williams has had trouble with drugs and alcohol and has been in and out of prison most of his life. He said his life was a mess, but added that Phillips is helping him.
“He’s helped me get my medicine, he’s made sure I’ve had my psychiatrist and he’s showing me how to be a man again,” Williams, 58, said. “I didn’t have a car for 15 years and a license for 16 but Calvin pushed me and pushed me to get them back.”
Phillips’ 25-year-old daughter, Dakeria, who lives in Daytona Beach, hasn’t seen her dad in about a year but talks to him at least twice a week.
“He’s my hero,” she said. “He’s someone I go to when I need advice on girl stuff. He’s one of the smartest men I know and the only reliable man I know. He’s the reason I went to school for sociology because I wanted to work with people.”
Phillips said she’s a carbon copy of him.
“We talk every Sunday,” he said, smiling.
Football dreams
Calvin Phillips has had his share of issues in his life. He said he had to learn how to love as a man. He had to learn how to trust and is still working on it.
That was mostly because Phillips lived without a dad, who died in the late 1980s.
But Phillips had several men in his life, including Lake Worth High School’s former principal David Cantley.
“He was a very good kid and a good student academically,” Cantley said. “His behavior was above reproach. He used to walk around campus with a handful of books and a pencil in his ear.”
Cantley played a pivotal role in helping Phillips decide where he wanted to go to college to play football.
“He received several scholarships and I just told him to look for the sincerity of these people and see what they want out of you after the wining and dining,” Cantley said.
Phillips chose West Virginia, Cantley said, mostly because of what they did after meeting with him.
“West Virginia turned him over to black and white students and in the other colleges, he felt like he was being segregated because they turned him over to only black students,” Cantley said.
Phillips said the university made him feel safe.
“I said, ‘I can play here,’” Phillips said.
And he did just that while earning a bachelor’s degree in social work. Phillips played in three bowl games, including a national championship Fiesta Bowl loss against No. 1 Notre Dame on Jan. 2, 1989. But after graduating, Phillips, who caught 67 career passes with seven touchdowns, wasn’t drafted by the NFL.
“I didn’t understand why and I was angry with my coaches,” he said. “I tried out a few times, but it didn’t work out, so it was time for me to move on. But I asked myself a question — what would I have done with all that money? I would’ve probably destroyed my life.”
In 1989, he was caught in a car with friends he said placed a gun underneath his seat. Phillips was charged with carrying a concealed weapon.
Then, in 1993, he was charged with domestic battery and firing a weapon into an occupied dwelling.
At the time, Phillips and his wife were having marital problems and, he said, during a domestic dispute his gun fired while he was pounding on the door of his house.
The 1989 case was sealed by the judge on the condition that Phillips return to college.
In the 1993 case, Phillips went to counseling for six months and fulfilled 50 hours of community service.
“When I first started this, it was difficult being a father figure because I had gone through a divorce and there were a lot of things in my life that weren’t working well,” he said. “I didn’t have my stuff together and I was a mess. I never knew who I was angry at, but I just lashed out.”
About 10 years ago, Phillips went back to Richmond to meet his family. His father’s side was quiet and professional while his mother’s side was the opposite.
“They were loud and drinkers,” Phillips said. “I
Following his lead
Phillips wakes up at 5:45 each morning. He’s normally at work at 7:30 a.m.
“I do a walk-through to see what’s going on,” he said.
His mission is simple — save lives.
“We don’t all get along or all agree, but if I have to save your life, I’m OK with whatever backlash there is,” he said. “Sometimes they don’t understand what I’m doing, but I just don’t want them to go through the turmoil I went through in my life.”
Being a father figure doesn’t come easy for Phillips. There were several committees he was asked to be on, but at the time, Phillips wasn’t ready.
“I got deeper into the church and really built myself up,” he said. “I made some mistakes along the way, but I’m still a good person.”
Phillips said he’s very hard on his men because he wants to see how far they will go to change.
Richard Phillips (no relation) is 50 and has been getting high and drunk for most of his life. He said he has no problems following Phillips’ lead.
“Following someone you admire, following somebody whose footsteps come from similar situations and who has overcome them and has made changes,” he said. “I didn’t want to get high anymore, but I didn’t know how not to get high.”
Phillips doesn’t tolerate alcohol, drugs, disrespecting women or cursing on campus. The rules are simple. Easy to follow. For most men.
“I love my job,” Phillips said. “It’s funny to say that, but it’s like family. It’s God’s work and it’s been said God takes out babies and fools. I’ve probably been both.”