Mike Phillips was half way through his junior year at Ada High School when he and his mother, Barbara, and step-father Jack Tyler moved to Purcell.

“One day I was a Cougar and the next I was a Dragon,” Phillips said with his patented grin the other day at Tyler’s Furniture.

Phillips and his wife, Terenda, now run the family business after Jack passed away in October 2012.

“Come December it will be 46 years,” Phillips said. “It’s really a miracle.”

Jack, Barbara and Mike lived in Ada and Mike said they would often travel from Ada, across the Lexington Bridge and then go on to Oklahoma City.

“I crossed that bridge thousands of times and never even knew Purcell had a downtown,” Phillips said.

He does now.

At 16 he began what turned into a career working at the furniture store Jack purchased from Don and Ramona
Vaughn.

“Dad was a traveling wholesale salesman but was actually a carpenter by trade,” Phillips said of his late father. Jack’s father was a trash man in Sulphur where Jack grew up. Jack had to help his father as a kid and said the job was “pretty messy”.

“Born and raised in Sulphur, Dad sold hardware in the southeastern part of the state but he got burned out.

“We had some distant relatives that had a furniture store in Sapulpa called Tyler’s Furniture,” Phillips recalled. “Any time we would have a family gathering Dad would always get with them talking about the furniture business.

“For years he wanted to be a businessman and was tired of traveling,” Phillips said.

Then one Sunday Jack was reading The Daily Oklahoman and saw in the classifieds that there were three furniture stores in Oklahoma selling out. One was here and the other two were in the far southwest part of the state.

“Dad mapped out a plan and went to talk to Don and Ramona, who were selling out including the building,” Phillips said. “They got acquainted and one day Dad shook Don’s hand and bought this store.

“Then he went back and told Mom,” Phillips said with a chuckle.

“We were in the process of putting in some new carpet and doing a few things to get the store ready to go,” Mike recalled. “We had the windows covered in butcher paper but had the front door and the back door propped open.

“A lady named Norma poked her head into the front door and said, ‘I see you’re opening a new store would you like to put an advertisement in the Maysville News?’”

Mike said his Dad said “absolutely come on in.”

“The whole time I saw her eye-balling this couch that had been left over from the Vaughns. After they got the ad taken care of she asked Dad if she could purchase the couch. He said yes and then asked her a question.”

“I’m sorry, Norma, I didn’t catch your last name,” Jack said.

“When she said it was Hope, tears ran down my Dad’s cheeks. I didn’t see him cry many times in my life but in that moment it was like God telling him there was hope in his business venture. God was telling him this is a good thing.”

Mike said Jack had a tough young life having to travel to California as a kid to pick cotton and fruit.

“When he was just 13 he drove all the way to California in a Model A having to stop every 15-20 miles to add oil to the car. He didn’t have a driver’s license but looked like he was 18.”

So Jack’s dream of becoming a businessman blossomed in Purcell.

“When we moved to Purcell I needed a change,” Phillips said. “I was going in the wrong direction. I started out in the right direction but moving to Purcell was a new lease on life. I was excited but upset moving away from the friends I had.

“Deep down inside I knew what I was doing was the right thing to do,” Phillips said. “My grandmother encouraged me and I knew some of the students here from when they attended elementary school at Ada.

“When I got to school on my first day at Purcell kids were changing classes. One of my old friends yelled out, ‘Hey Phillips’ and so a bunch of kids gathered around us.

“In Ada everyone was so cliquey but in Purcell everyone got a long with everybody. I was amazed and couldn’t believe how cool it was,” Phillips said.

“And I got to play football my senior year,” he continued. “It was great! My coach was Rick Clark.”

Phillips was voted Homecoming King but didn’t get to kiss Homecoming Queen Angela Eaton.

“Since I was the new kid, they thought someone who had gone to school here for years should be the King and Jay Combest got to kiss Angela. I ended up being the Homecoming King and Queen Escort,” he said.

Mike and Terenda married in 1995.

“Dad knew I would need a helper so he chose the best one,” Mike said of Terenda.

Terenda was a law office secretary for Ted Haxel but started working part-time at the furniture store in 2011.

“Jack started teaching me all the stuff he did because he knew Mike would need a helper,” Terenda said. “I started working full-time when the girls were in school.”

The hardest part of their job?

Both Mike and Terenda agreed it’s the technology.

“It’s been such a drastic and quick change. It’s pretty aggravating,” Mike said.

Terenda echoed his frustration.

“All of the catalogs are on the computer,” she said. “You have to buy this app to do this and then buy another app to follow up and before you know it you’ve had to buy four apps to have catalogs for customers to look at.”

“Terenda does a great job on Facebook,” Mike said.

“We are a small business and don’t have millions of dollars to spend a year on advertising,” he continued. “We have to keep our overhead low so we can be competitive.”

“Terenda is the brains of the operation,” Mike says flatly.

When Tyler’s Furniture came into business, it was one of four furniture stores,” Phillips said.

“There was Vaughns, J.W. McGuire, the Ewings and the Western Auto across the street sold recliners,” he recalled.

Now, it’s Tyler’s and Davis Sit-N-Sleep on south Green Avenue.

The most gratifying part of the job for the Phillips is the loyal customers that keep coming back for generations.

“We have to sell ourselves not just furniture,” Mike said. “It’s gratifying when people put their trust in you. There are way more gratifying times than disappointing times.”