Wednesday, May 30, 2001
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Wednesday, May 30, 2001 |
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Phillips saddles up for new post By MONROE
ROARK
In the final scene of "The Searchers" arguably the best final scene of any film in history John Wayne steps off the porch and walks into the sunset as the door closes behind him. Gary Phillips, who counts Wayne among his personal heroes, gets a chance to do the same thing in the next few weeks. After 15 years as principal at Fayette County High School and 33 years as an educator in Georgia, Phillips has announced his retirement from the state's school system. As the last day of school was Friday, his work with students is already completed, and his actual final day on the job will be sometime between the last teacher workday this Tuesday and the expiration date of his contract (June 30). Phillips actually served at Fayette County High on two separate occasions. He spent seven years as a teacher and coach before moving on to four other schools, then returned in 1984 as assistant principal, taking the top job two years later. His first impression of the school was quite different from what would be seen today. Four days after completing college in 1968, Phillips became one of only 32 teachers at a school of 600 students in five grades the only high school in the county at the time. When he came back in 1984, school enrollment was twice that number and McIntosh had just opened in Peachtree City. More than 2,000 students completed the 2000-01 academic year at Fayette County last week, and the county projects about 2,200 to arrive for the first day of class in August. Phillips supervised a staff of five assistant principals, 125 teachers and some 50 other staff during his final year. "This is the third time we've been over 2,000 since I've been here," he said Wednesday during an interview in his office, with a life-size John Wayne cutout serving as a backdrop. He never expected to end his career in the principal's office. His original plan was to keep coaching as long as he could. "I figured they'd carry me off the field feet-first," he said. After his first stint at Fayette County, his coaching career (football and track) carried him to West Rome, Central of Macon, Johnson County, and Riverwood in Fulton County. He had regional success at nearly every stop, but his biggest state wins in coaching came at Johnson County, in the small town of Wrightsville. That was where he met the most famous athlete he would ever coach, a young man named Herschel Walker. Phillips recalls a teenager with a great attitude who offered to play any position the coach wanted so that the team would win. When Phillips took the job, he made a slight adjustment he moved Walker from fullback to tailback. In doing that, he altered the course of the Johnson County athletic program and perhaps the University of Georgia's as well. Johnson County won a state championship in football and two in track, with Walker as a sprinter, during Phillips' tenure. Walker went on to a national championship and Heisman Trophy with UGA before a long career in the National Football League. Today, Phillips looks back at his time at Johnson County with a smile and simply says, "That was a case of being in the right place at the right time." He still talks to Walker once or twice a year, and Phillips said he got a call during the Christmas holidays from his former player, who had heard of Phillips' son's illness. Although he never planned to be principal, Phillips said he was encouraged by his bosses during his coaching career, several of whom told him he would make a good principal. After going back to school and earning a graduate degree, he learned of the opening at Fayette County. Walking out the door for summer vacation in 1984, he answered the phone as an afterthought, intending to let the machine pick it up and listen the next week. Instead, he spoke to Dr. Bob Martin, then principal at Fayette County, and was hired over the phone. Martin took the principal's job at East Fayette Elementary two years later and Phillips succeeded him. Now he is moving on again, this time to the Georgia High School Association as an assistant director. He is scheduled to begin July 9 in the role formerly held by Ralph Swearingen, who is succeeding Tommy Guillebeau as GHSA executive director. Phillips brings years of experience and dozens of contacts that should benefit him directly in his new post, having spent years as a coach and teacher in several locations in addition to his time in the principal's office. He will also be able to take this step without moving his family, which includes his wife and a 23-year-old son, since the GHSA office is in Thomaston. The biggest adjustment will be the decreased interaction with students. Phillips noted that the worst aspect of running a school with 2,000 students is the difficulty in getting to know as many young people as he would like, and letting them get to know him. "The principal has this image of being the last guy the students want to see coming down the hall," he said. "I want them to know that I'm here because I want to help them." That's a big change from being a coach, he says, because a coach can often carry a lot more weight with his students because of the way that position is viewed often a "hero" of sorts, he said. "When I interviewed young coaches, I tried to get that across to them how much more influence a coach can have than a principal," he said. Now he goes off into the sunset with a few mementos, such as a photo of Phillips with Dan Quayle, who spoke at Fayette County High during his term as vice president. There are also a lot of John Wayne photos to come off the wall and be remounted at his next office, or perhaps at home, where he has about 150 of the Duke's 180-plus films on video. "My wife fusses about that," he says with a laugh about his preoccupation with his John Wayne toys. "I've started collecting the movies on DVD now. That'll take up even more space." Several years ago, a group of students gave Phillips a framed copy of a saying attributed to Wayne. It reads: "Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway." He smiles as he reads those words and reflects upon the many times he tried to get that message across to the young people under his watch. "I like that," he said. "You can be scared, but you can still saddle up." His career at Fayette County High may be over, but his influence on high school students will not end when he moves to the GHSA and saddles up one more time.
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