Be Kind. Rewind. (…to 1982)
If we’re lucky and are paying attention, we experience early lessons that shape us throughout our careers. This was one of them.
The Hero Crab: adorning rear view mirrors and monitors for 40 years.
During the summer of ’82, between my junior and senior years at Maryland, I (along with a few of my frat brothers) interned at a small advertising agency in the beach town of Ocean City, MD. The agency also published several free resort newspapers for OC, Bethany and Rehoboth. The owner was an alum and liked to give “descendants” experience in their chosen fields as summer jobs. I was put in charge of all radio advertising production, photography, copywriting and occasional illustration and design work. Sean, a close friend, frat brother, and cohort in this story, was a journalism major so he was put in charge of researching and writing articles for the newspapers. Others worked in sales and production. It was the perfect summer job - learning our trade hands-on, in a beach resort town, with our evenings free and we got paid! Some of our friends from college were also working summer jobs at the beach in OC. So let’s just say it was a great time to be young, fairly carefree, at the beach, with high metabolism.
My first bona fide business card.
This, along with my camera and Sean’s notepad, was usually the ticket to free drinks at the bars we “reviewed and rated” several nights a week. Sometimes, there was even film in my camera…
Sean (with his journalism notepad) and I (with my camera) were often paired on the best of assignments: reviewing the opening of a new bar or restaurant on rowdy weekend nights, or documenting the weekly bikini contests at our clients’ hotels, or who had the best hot tubs on the beach. It was mostly fluff “reporting”, and we usually joined in the festivities we were covering and hardly ever paid for anything because management wanted a good review. Occasionally we’d cover some “hard” news, like interviewing the mayor on his latest parking decree, or the seagull situation plaguing the boardwalk, or profiles on Ocean City’s movers and shakers. Like the one we did on the Phillips family.
Our boss told us he’d been trying to get a foothold into the Phillips Seafood company for some time in the hopes of landing some of their advertising accounts. If you’re even vaguely familiar with the Maryland blue crab, then you’re probably familiar with Phillips - the wildly successful group of crab houses. Somehow, a family profile interview was arranged at the home of founders Brice and Shirley Phillips. The true purpose was not to try to win their advertising business, but rather do a profile article for one of the newspapers. There was no hidden agenda. Despite their incredible wealth and fame, the Phillips had the reputation of being humble, kind, generous with their time and never forgetting their roots. I’ll say up front that all of that was true. We were college kids on a casual assignment, but we were treated with professionalism, respect and warmth.
The (Ocean City) Breeze cover - “The Latest Beach Fashions for ‘82!”
In addition to my radio duties, I was the chief photographer for the agency. Mostly because I had the good camera. This staged shot was for the cover story of one of our free newspapers and used one our client’s locations. I still have a copy of this issue buried in the attic somewhere. The “models” were all friends we hung out with that summer. Well, not the guys. I don’t remember how they got in the shot, but for self-preservation, we’d never hang out with guys that looked like that.
Sean (with his notepad) and I (with my camera) arrived at their home at the allotted afternoon time and were greeted by Mr. Phillips himself. We sat in the spacious living room with Brice, Shirley and their two adult sons, Stephen and Jeffrey, who were involved in the family business, and began the interview. Sean would ask questions of each person as I took some candid shots and interjected some follow-up questions of my own. We treated each interviewee as an equal, with their own questions and solo photos. Jeffrey had been in a serious accident some time earlier and was still suffering from some cognitive challenges, so it was very difficult for him to maneuver and articulate clearly and quickly. But Sean and I didn’t even think about it - he was part of the family and were interviewing the family, so we waited patiently for his answers, confirming with him (not the others) if we didn’t quite understand what he said, and joked with him just like we did with everyone else. We didn’t treat him any differently, but it wasn’t on purpose - he was just one of the family members we were sent there to interview.
After the session, I staged some family shots around the house. When we were done, we gave our thanks and said our goodbyes. Brice Phillips walked us to the door, then followed us outside. He said he wanted to personally express his gratitude with the way we handled ourselves during our time there. He told us that they had been interviewed by all sorts of national media, the Big 3 TV networks, newspapers and popular national magazines. He said they (the media) all were uncomfortable with how his son struggled to articulate, so they didn’t pay much attention to him. But we - these two college kids from the local free supermarket paper - were the first to treat him as an equal, with respect and patience and ignored his condition (in a good way). Mr. Phillips told us that meant to the world to him - and he could tell it meant a lot to his son too. I daresay Mr. Phillips’ eyes welled up, but I remember his words and expression like it was yesterday. He gave us each a small embroidered crab as a parting gift and I promptly stuck it on my rear view mirror in my car.
A few days later, our boss came into the office and asked (in so many words), “What the hell did you say to them out there???” Because apparently, not long after our interview, our boss got a call and was awarded a portion of Phillips advertising.
I kept that crab on the mirror of that car and on subsequent cars I’d own as a reminder of that day. I moved it to my main workstation monitor when I started iMed Design. Since I received it 40 years ago, it’s literally been in my view every day as a constant reminder of what it means to just be kind. Sometimes the rewards are internal, known only to me - sometimes they can manifest themselves in unexpected ways. It’s like my Dad used to say, “Do the right thing even when no one is looking.” Except the crab - the crab is always looking.
This was the view from the front of our rented house that summer. I remember taking this shot beyond getting eaten by mosquitoes. The colors are un-retouched - we truly had a purple sunset. Maybe it was because I was playing Prince on my Walkman…
Epilogue: Shirley Phillips passed away in 2017 (Brice passed in 2011) and I posted a short recounting of this story on my Facebook page. Quite unexpectedly, I received a response from one of the granddaughters, thanking me for that tribute and said she too keeps one of those embroidered crabs on her monitor as a remembrance of her grandfather. The Crab Abides!