Part six of NorthBay series
By Julia Boyle
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE
If Phil Davis’s past was a road, it would parallel many of the young lives he touches each week at NorthBay, the Erickson-run environmental center and summer camp in North East, Md.
When he started working there in July 2006, Davis saw little direction in his own life, let alone the ability to give direction to others. But in September of that year he met a sixth-grade student from a middle school in Rising Sun, Md. who opened his eyes to the role model inside.
“I am always my hardest critic, believing that I am not a role model,” he wrote in a blog about the experience. “But here is a young student from an underprivileged section in Cecil County looking up to a black man from Baltimore, who proudly graduated from a historically black university.”
A familiar story
Davis grew up in the outskirts of Baltimore City. His mother and father—both nondenominational Christian ministers—raised him and two older siblings.
Until age twelve. It was then that he hit a rock in his path. His father, a Baltimore City police officer and his best friend, died of cancer. “I was at an age where there were some definite guidelines that I needed in my life from a father figure—the same age as our students. My mother was able to provide them for me, but without the presence of a man, it changed the way I looked at things and grew up,” he says.
From that point, his life resembled many of the students he teaches at North- Bay—guided by a single, working mom in Baltimore. He spent more time in the inner city, cut school once in a while—“nothing too extreme,” he says. “But it was a very, very difficult time.”
Strength in differences
He focused on sports to direct his energy more positively but still found himself learning lessons the hard way. “Like many of the kids who come to NorthBay, I had no blueprint to shoot for, no one who I resembled, no role model,” he says.