Willard Reese Phillips is my Grandpa. I grew up calling him Papa Phillips. He was around most of my life while I was growing up in Panaca, Nevada and I have all kinds of memories of him. The things that I recall most was that he loved numbers, football - the 49ers (go figure), horses and had a few fields around the valley. He was really into the outdoors more so consisting of camping, dutch oven cooking and horse packing trips. He was very knowledgeable.
Before my family moved to Panaca in 1990, Papa & Mema came out to visit us in Texas. This is probably the earliest memory I have of him, though I repeatedly heard about the time when I was very small and supposedly called my grandparents saying "Coming to Panaca." Papa would repeat that to me all the time then laugh. So they came out to Texas and my mom told me that Papa had stepped on a nail. Being around 5 year old, I always pictured a rusty 4 inch nail and a bare foot getting ready to step on it. I wanted to see the hole. It was early one morning and everyone was still asleep. I crept into the living room where my grandparents were sleeping on the brown soft sleeper and I saw that one of Papa's feet was sticking out of the covers. I sunk down to the foot of the bed and had a look. I didn't see a hole or any evidence of a healed one. It must be on the other foot, but there was no way that I was going to see it, so I went back to my room. I never did see that hole and at times doubted there ever was one.
He was born in 1935 in Caliente, Nevada. His mother was Bernice Simkins and his father was Reese Jackman Taylor. His parents were married a very short time and got divorced before he was born. His mother remarried Alvin LaVon Phillips and together they raised Papa. LaVon soon adopted Papa and the Phillips name was inherited.
Papa mostly grew up in a little town near Caliente called Barkley. He
