The Phil Campbells are at it again
Men named Phil Campbell from across the country and the world help clean up the Alabama town of Phil Campbell following the devastating tornadoes of April 27, 2011, which practically wiped it out. (Contributed)
When Phil Campbell heard his name shouted out on the television show “Hee Haw” one “drunk and dateless” night in the early 1990s, it got his attention. What he didn’t know is that it would change the trajectory of his life.
The nod was actually to a small town in northwest Alabama, and he made plans to visit his namesake the next summer.
“Everything started from the learning about the town and even the way I learned about it,” he recalled. Upon arriving at the town clerk’s office, he found out that he was not the first one to make that trip.
“They showed me a file folder of all the Phil Campbells who had visited and I decided right there on the spot that I was going to bring all the Phil Campbells back to Phil Campbell.”
Phil Campbell call to action from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
He did that the following summer and was joined by 22 Phils and a Phyllis for the first-ever Phil Campbell convention, a stunt that made for a great story and also landed him in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not.
Fast-forward to 2011. The 100th anniversary of Phil Campbell, Alabama, is coming up and Brooklyn Phil, as he has come to be known, decides to pull the stunt again, this time having the advantage of Facebook and the Internet to spread the word exponentially farther and wider. As the invitations to “The International Phil Campbell Convention in Phil Campbell, Alabama, for the 100th Anniversary of Phil Campbell Alabama” are about to go out, though, a deadly EF5 tornado rips through the state, devastating the town and killing 26 people.
“I’m waking up one morning and Facebook is on fire,” he says. “The weather that had hit all of the South basically, April 27th, 2011, swept through Phil Campbell as well as other parts of the region. Twenty-six people had died. It was a really serious moment and you had to hesitate as to what the appropriate thing is.”
The appropriate thing, as it turned out, was to turn their stunt into a relief effort. The Phils raised $42,000 and 20 of them (from as far away as Alaska and Australia) descended upon Phil Campbell to help with cleanup and rebuilding. This garnered the attention of everyone from The New York Times to actor Jason Biggs, who played a character named Phil Campbell in the film “Grassroots,” which was based on a book written by Brooklyn Phil.
The effort also birthed “I’m With Phil,” a documentary directed by Phil Campbell native Andrew Reed. “When the tornado hit his town, it became a very personal thing for him,” says Campbell. “I told him, ‘Just keep filming. It seems like the thing that you’re meant to do here is tell the story.’”
‘I’m with Phil’: Movie tells Alabama town’s extraordinary story from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.
The film, which was finished thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, has made the festival circuit, winning “Best of Show” at the George Lindsey UNA Film Festival in Florence, Alabama, and “Best of the Fest” at the Heartland Film Festival in Indiana. You can watch the film on-demand on Comcast or buy a DVD on the “I’m With Phil” website. Talks for distribution on Dish, Netflix, and iTunes are also in the works.
With the fifth anniversary of the tornado at hand, the town of Phil Campbell is planning an evening of “Recovery, Celebration and Remembrance” at its high school’s football field on April 27. The town is also preparing for the 15th Annual Phil Campbell Hoedown in June, which many of the Phils from around the world are planning to attend.
“So many people during that time were just getting in their cars and going and helping out,” Campbell says. “I wanted to make it a way to represent the instinctive desire for when there’s a crisis, you get up and help. It was just an amazing way to show that this town is going to rebuild, this town is going to come back.”
“People are going to come together as a community, and now instead of just the town being a community, we have this expanded community of the Phil Campbells around the world.”
