Phil Marsh has had a great appreciation for downtown Mount Airy since his childhood, when many fond memories were made there.
“I showed up every Saturday when I could,” Marsh recalled the days when he grew up on his family’s farm in the community of Beulah, where a trip to the city was a welcome diversion from the tobacco fields.
Marsh, now 73, says his father drove him to Mount Airy and placed him in front of the Earle Theater, where the venerable downtown cinema used to show three feature films on a Saturday.
The weekend tour also usually included a stop at another popular establishment at the time.
“I used to go to The Canteen when I was young,” said Marsh of a snack bar / malt specializing in ice cream and milkshakes.
Overall, he spent so much time in the city center that it went into the blood. “It just stays with you,” he said of collective experiences that have kept such feelings strong to this day.
“I think I love the city center.”
His first excursions there would lead Marsh to live later in the city’s central business district and become involved with the Downtown Business Association (DBA), an organization he now runs.
Marsh’s service with this group includes playing a key role in coordinating various events, including holiday parades, cruises and Mayberry Farm Fest, among others.
Although Marsh has a reputation for serving quietly behind the scenes, without fanfare, Marsh has attracted the attention of observers from downtown and the Main Street state program. He named him the 2018 Main Street champion for Mount Airy Downtown Inc.
Local Main Street coordinator Lizzie Morrison called Marsh “the epitome” of that designation when the award was announced.
“I can’t thank you enough for your dedication and service to our community,” commented Morrison. “He’s one of the most hardworking and humble people I know, and I don’t know where we would be without him.”
In addition to his service with the DBA, Marsh owns two older buildings on North Main Street, including one that houses an office for his electricity contracting business, which further consolidated him in downtown Mount Airy.
Marsh was born in 1947 a few blocks from the city’s main street, at the Martin Memorial Hospital, which would be destroyed by fire several years later.
Hard work classes
Phil Marsh’s youth was filled with more than relaxing in the theater on leisure Saturdays, however.
“When I was growing up, I had to work every day,” he noted during an interview last Monday.
“My parents both worked with textiles,” said Marsh about Herman and Carolyn Lankford Marsh, “and we were also tobacco producers.”
This was true for many people in Surry County at the time, which also included their grandparents on both sides and other family members. “Everyone was a tobacco farmer.”
Being an only child meant Phil Marsh probably spent more time in the fields than young people from larger families, whether it included preparing tobacco, covering plants or other tasks.
He also found time to help out on neighboring farms, along with the courtyards – “everything I could to earn extra money.”
Once the workday was over, young people in the neighborhood did not stop engaging in pranks from time to time. One night, Marsh and other boys put on sheets and pretended to be ghosts, hiding in a church graveyard on Pine Ridge and jumping when vehicles passed.
One woman was so terrified that she crashed her car into a ditch. It turned out that she was the sister of a local police officer who did not like the event.
However, the lessons of hard work learned early in life helped to define Phil Marsh as a person who continues to devote many hours to his electrical business and community ventures.
“I think that’s how I was raised – I mean, I have to be busy doing something,” he said, instead of sitting, as some of his generation can do.
“If you know Phil, you know that he is always on the move and usually on his way to help someone else,” agreed Morrison, the coordinator of Main Street.
“He stops by my office almost daily to ask if there is anything he can do to help. It has been a wonderful blessing to have Phil as a center leader, mentor and friend. “
Powered by electricity
Marsh attended the now defunct Beulah School during his elementary school years, before advancing to North Surry High School en route to the electric field.
“After I finished high school, I went to work for Duke Power in Winston-Salem and worked on a line team,” said Marsh, explaining that he was actually hired by Duke through another company that employed his cousin, Jerry Southern.
Southern encouraged Marsh to try to get there too.
“He said that if you can learn to climb poles, you can make more money,” said Marsh, which included becoming well versed in using equipment for this job.
“So he brought his hooks and belts home and we practiced on a cow pasture.”
Marsh says his reason for pursuing a career in electricity is because it is a qualified trade that offers rewards. “That was the kind of work you could do and make money.”
In addition to Duke Power (now Duke Energy), the local man has worked for companies like Reynolds Tobacco in his electrical department and Inman Electric in Mount Airy.
Although these positions paid well, the electrician also offered his share of risks. “It’s dangerous work,” emphasized Marsh.
In addition to being close to high voltage lines that pose a risk of electrocution, there are other ways for a person to get hurt, he said when reporting some difficult situations during his long career.
On one occasion, while working with a team unloading streetlights, one of them gave in and cut off the top of Marsh’s head. “If it weren’t for the helmet, it probably would have hurt me a lot,” he said of standard protective equipment.
Again, Marsh was trying to climb a utility pole, in which the unexpected presence of a hole made by a woodpecker made him fall.
“And I slid down the pole – my arms were burned,” he said, requesting some first aid from co-workers.
“That was when I was 18 and I’m still doing it,” he said of electrical work.
While it may seem that he jumped from job to job, Marsh explained that the jobs tended to be temporary or part-time, which filled out an agricultural operation that he also maintained in Beulah.
Marsh later started a business on his own, what he said was at least 35 years ago.
Phil Marsh Electrical Co. handles residential and commercial jobs, about 75 percent of which are in the latter category. He works with son John, 50, and grandson Eli in the business, along with wife Peggy, a retired nurse. Marsh also has a daughter, Suzette.
Overcoming tragedy
Marsh continued to cultivate after launching his electrical business.
He cultivated 35 to 40 acres of hay, part of which was used in its propagation, which included a horse farm, with the remainder sold to other farmers. “And once I had strawberries,” said Marsh, who also maintained an apple orchard with about 500 trees.
The horse operation – which involved raising, training and showing quarter-mile horses – became a great source of entertainment for him.
“My wife was also interested in this and we started attending horse shows,” he said of his first wife, Chris. The horse farm, which could house up to 12 purebred mounts at any given time, served as a successful business and a competitive outlet for the couple.
The tragedy would occur, however, in the form of one of the life challenges that Marsh had to overcome.
“My first wife died of cancer,” he said of Chris Marsh, who died in 1999.
“It was a great challenge to work and care for her,” added Marsh. “She looked really bad and I had to sit with her all night.”
Other family members also helped, including the couple’s son and daughter and Chris’s sister, who took a leave of absence from the airline to take care of the patient at home.
“I slept in a chair for six months – that’s how it got bad,” said Marsh.
His wife eventually succumbed to the disease, dying at age 51 on his birthday.
Eternal love for the center
Marsh, who later remarried, decided to stop working in agriculture around 2004 and moved to Renfro Lofts, in the center. While there, he became involved with the Downtown Business Association, which coordinates events and other promotional activities to keep the mall thriving.
“There were a lot of good traders and people involved with the city center and everyone wanted to see the good in the center,” said Marsh of his reasons for joining the DBA. This involvement has lasted 16 years, including several terms as president of the organization.
Marsh’s foray into downtown Mount Airy soon became more than residential in nature. After moving there, he turned to the Something Different on Main business, located in the historic Banner Building.
“We bought the business and started running it too,” said Marsh, in addition to other activities.
The DBA employee resided in Renfro Lofts for 12 years before moving to the Pine Ridge area, where his wife’s grandparents lived. While this reflects his love of the countryside, it is also a better place to store electrical equipment, says Marsh.
He now owns the Banner structure and the old Merle Norman building in the city center, on which Marsh worked as part of his busy schedule.
Leading events
Although he no longer lives in the center of Mount Airy, Phil Marsh’s heart and soul remain as entrenched there as ever, even playing a key role in organizing the various events held there by the DBA.
The advent of COVID-19 meant “disaster” for these activities during 2020, Marsh said by condensing all frustrations related to cancellation into one word.
“It looks like it got worse over the year,” he said of the impact of the coronavirus that routinely led to the dismantling of events that drove the local economy.
“I mean, we planned and talked about it,” Marsh added of trying to work on events related to the pandemic, which always seemed to boil down to “maybe next month.”
People constantly stopped him on the street to ask when the next cruise would take place, he said of an example of the uncertainties faced by restrictions on public collection. The annual cruises from June to October are events with a large audience, boasting car owners and fans from near and far.
“It just didn’t work for us,” said the president of the Downtown Business Association.
He expects a better 2020, including the destination of the next big city center planned event, the Mayberry Farm Fest this spring.
Marsh considers this his favorite, due to his agricultural background, but gives credit to fellow DBA Gail Hull for being the baton behind that festival that shows the area’s agricultural culture.
It includes attractions like live animals, exhibitions of old equipment and a parade of tractors that can have 60 or more entries, including many older ones that have been lovingly restored.
“It’s good for families, kids – it’s good for farmers,” said Marsh of the Mayberry Farm Fest.
“They love it,” he mentioned of the latter, especially those who want to show off their valuable tractors.
Marsh also likes the Mayberry Cool Cars and Rods Cruise-In series presented by the Downtown Business Association.
This comes from the point of view of someone who loved to rebuild and restore vintage cars and hot rods and drag-racing them – who he admits to getting involved along local roads during his youth.
Marsh says the success of the central business district over the years is due to the team’s effort. It is one that includes not only the Downtown Business Association, but also the Greater Mount Airy Chamber of Commerce, Mount Airy Visitors Center and Mount Airy Downtown Inc.
“We all work together and help each other.”