the debate team, performed odd jobs, and met his wife, Pat (Bonzo) ’70, through a mutual friend in the dining hall. After 54 years of marriage, Pat still smiles when she recalls her and Jim’s first date. “He took me to a basketball game at Wilmington College that he was broadcasting for,” she said. “I sat in the stands with one of my girlfriends while he did the radio, but I quite enjoyed it.” Jim and Pat dated for just under a year and got married at the end of his senior year in 1968. But aside from his new marriage, Phipps didn’t know what life would include after graduation. He had been considering graduate school when John Reed, former chair of the speech and English department, called him into his office just weeks before graduation. “Dr. Reed didn’t ask, he just told me: ‘We’ve gotta have a teacher for Fundamentals of Speech in the fall, and you’re it,’” Phipps said. Though not what he was expecting, Phipps accepted the position. He spent the summer leading up to the school year working as a bricklayer and preparing for the classroom. However , the intens i fy ing Vietnam crisis complicated Phipps’ plans. Late in his first year of teaching, Phipps received a draft notice. “We thought he was going,” Pat recalled. “I went with him to the processing station in Cincinnati, thinking we were saying goodbye. But at the end of the day, he came back. They said an old knee injury disqualified him.” It was as if the attorney’s words from Phipps’ senior year of high school were ringing out again: “You must have a reason to live, because you shouldn’t be alive.” And truly, Phipps made serving the Lord at Cedarville his reason to live. After Phipps’ first year as a faculty member, Reed left Cedarville to teach at another institution. Reed’s resignation created a leadership need in the department — a department now consisting solely of Phipps and MiriamMaddox, a faculty member already busy with coaching debate, directing theater, and instructing Fundamentals of Speech. “I had to step up,” Phipps explained. “When I came to Cedarville as a student, I thought I’d get my degree and move on. Dr. Reed leaving changed that. I realized that he’d been planning for me to be his replacement all along.” But Reed’s resignation wasn’t the only transition that Phipps had to manage. In 1970, the same year Phipps took over as chair of the Department of Speech and English, the department split. Out of that split emerged the Department of English, now the Department of English, Literature, and Modern Languages, and the Department of Communication. And left to lead the Department of Communication stood Jim Phipps, a 25-year-old with two years of teaching experience, no graduate degrees, and the responsibility to build a department from the ground up. “Oh, I never worked alone,” Phipps said, shaking his head. “This department was built on the backs of other brilliant scholars. All I did was act as the chief organizer.” Phipps took on heavy workloads in his new leadership role. He earned a master’s in broadcasting and a doctorate in communication from The Ohio State University in the early years of his professorial career while also teaching full loads, helping raise his and Pat’s three children — Lori (Phipps) Vasquez ’96, Sheri (Phipps) Lichtensteiger ’99, and Tim ’03, covering basketball games, and faithfully attending Wednesday night prayer meetings at Grace Baptist, his local church. But even after completing his graduate studies, Phipps devoted extra hours to Cedarville and the local community. He taught over 20 credit hours per term, coached the men’s golf team, served for 16 years as village mayor, cheered all three of his children on through graduate degree programs, and interim pastored at six different churches — some as far away as Toledo — over his 52 years as a professor. “I had around 50 advisees, plus classes, plus basketball — but back then, we never worried about how much the workload was,” he said. “We just wanted to get the job done for our students. And I still miss the students.” Two of those students who Phipps invested in currently serve as Department of Communication faculty members: Jeff Gilbert ’87 and Green. A LASTING IMPACT Gilbert wasn’t sure of his next steps when he graduated from Cedarville. “Dr. Phipps really helped me along in my career. He was the referral for my first newspaper job out of college,” Gilbert shared. “And he helped me get hired back here years later.” Phipps remembers teaching Gilbert in a sportscasting class, and he reflects fondly on Gilbert’s career success. “This department was built on the backs of other brilliant scholars. All I did was act as the chief organizer.” 6 | Cedarville Magazine
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