Leveling up

Tucked away just off the intersection of Tate Cove Road and Lincoln Road in Ville Platte is a set of buildings that house what was once a flourishing businesses. Inside these buildings are pieces of lumber and rusted tools that were used to construct residential and commercial buildings around south Louisiana. One of these rusted tools is a near 90-year-old passepartout that belonged to Benson Phillips.
Benson used that old fashioned saw in his residential construction business. “I used it a couple times at our camp,” said Benson’s grandson Audie. “It takes a man to use that all day. It’s rough, and it’s hard.”
As Audie went on to explain, “You have to have a good partner because whenever he’s pulling you kind of have to push, and whenever you’re pushing he kind of has to pull.”
The business Benson ran with his passepartout was then passed on to his son Fred Phillips.
“My dad got started when he came out of the Marine Corps,” said Fred’s other son Steve Phillips. “He was in the Marine Corps from 1951 to 1953 and served in the Korean War. When he came back at the end of 1953, he went into residential business for himself.”
Fred, then, turned it into a family affair. His wife, Bonwit, was very involved in the process and even took customers to Lafayette to pick out materials. Fred’s brother, Burke, was also on deck as the build out person.
Also in this family affair were Fred’s two sons- Audie and Steve.
“It was a good experience,” Steve said about growing up in the business. “I’d go work with dad in the summertime on the jobs to clean up. I just grew up in it, and that’s what I did all my life.”
Audie said, “I got to meet a lot of people and always had something to do. I enjoyed working with my family. It was a good experience.”
Fred ran the business from 1954 until 1982. That year, Steve and Audie took over in the operations.
“It was more responsibility, and we worked together great,” Audie said. “We were very fortunate for that. We had our father watching us like a hawk. He kept us in line.”
That same year, 1982, marked a shift in the business. Prior to that year, the business mainly constructed residential projects. As Steve explained, “After 1982, the insurance rates went very high, and it was very hard to get work because people weren’t building that much.”
That shift meant the business transitioned into more strictly into commercial and industrial projects. The shift, however, did not slow the business. It continued to grow as the Phillips’ completed projects across Evangeline Parish, Acadiana, and even Beauregard, Jeff Davis, Calcasieu, and Rapides Parishes.
During that span, one of the most unique jobs was about 20 years ago at Union Tank Car Company.
“We built a new blasting area for the box cars,” Steve said. “They had one building that’s 74-feet high. We had never built a building of that magnitude. It was embedded in the ground roughly about 6-feet. The box cars would go down into the ground and come back up.”
He continued, “There was a lot of excavation in the ground, but everything went well. We were happy, and they were happy.”
Over the years, however, Steve’s health began to become an issue as macular degeneration set into his eyes.
After discussions with his brother, Steve came to the tough decision to retire.
“It feels funny,” he said. “I worked all my life ever since I was a kid. Even when I was in high school, I worked for Brown’s Thrift City where Brown’s Furniture is now. I enjoy working, and I’ll miss working.”
Steve hopes to eventually have surgery on his eyes. He is also hopeful to one day possibly get back into the business. Until then, though, he plans to “enjoy retirement and work around the house and the camp.”
As for Audie, “The next chapter is retiring, taking it easy with my grandchildren, and maybe fishing and hunting.”
Looking back on the long career in his family’s business, Steve said the biggest accomplishments are the fruits of their labors.
“Ninety-five percent of the time the jobs were started with nothing on an empty lot or empty acreage,” he said. “We had to work the land and come up with the uprise of the building. At the end, we could see it, and it’s there. We built something from scratch.”
He concluded, “Today we ride around all over south Louisiana and see buildings that we built. I show my grandchildren, and they say, ‘Pawpaw, you built that?’ I say, ‘Yea, we built that.’”