Romper Room lady still a Do Bee

— On a recent Monday, Nella Pitts Phillips walked 18,383 steps. On the following Friday, she walked 16,913.

Pick any day during the last five years, and she can tell you how many steps it contained.

Most she takes before 7 a.m.;

many of those she collects while walking up and down driveways, carrying to porches the newspapers she sees on lawns.

“I walk as a ministry for helping others,” says Phillips, who wears one (down from two)pedometer(s).

“I go quite a long way. I have a certain route I follow.

I pick up the newspaper and take it to the door. When I put it there, even though no one hears me, I say, ‘In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and for the love of Jesus, I present you with the paper.’”

Phillips started walking outdoors when her doctor suggested she get off her treadmill and go outside. “Start with five minutes,” the doctor said. “Swing your arms. You’ll feel good and you won’t have neck pain.”

“At first it was just up and down the block and back home,” says Phillips, who lives in North Dallas. “Then I decided to walk a little farther. With the newspapers, I feel I can be of help in some way.”

Seven days a week, rain (unless torrential) or shine, she’s out before dawn, delivering newspapers, unfurling twisted porch flags (“so they can fly free” she explains), reaching into her pockets for dog treats to give canines she encounters.

She doesn’t listen to music or the radio when she’s walking. Instead, she focuses on nature (“It’s just marvelous! Once I saw a black and white bunny, and once I saw an armadillo!”). She prays. She practices the book reviews she presents, often dressed as historical figures.

Were you to walk past her one day and hear her talking, you might think - as random people in stores do - “Hmm. That voice sounds familiar.”

It always tickles her, because 38 years have passed since she was “Miss Vicki” on WFAA-TV’s local version of the nationally franchised children’s show Romper Room. From September 1969 to May 1972, 30 minutes a day, five days a week, she read stories and played games on the air with 5-year-olds.

She loved encouraging children to be Do Bees (“Do Bee a bed-maker”) instead of Don’t-Bees (“Don’t Bee a bed jumper”).

She still gives out green and yellow plastic Do Bee rings (though her supply is running low). She also has the “Magic Mirror” into which she’d gaze at show’s end and call out the names of lucky children she saw.

“It was a lot of fun, but not fast-paced,” says Phillips in her soft, clear, still sounds-like-she’s-in-her-20s voice. (Producers, by the way, didn’t think children could pronounce Phillips, so she went with Vicki, her mother’s middle name). “When Sesame Street came in, it was a death knell for us.”

But red-haired, green-eyed Phillips (“put me in front of a microphone and I get ecstatic”) found other creative outlets. She, who had performed with the American Red Cross in Korea, became the spokesman for Montgomery Ward. She did (and still does) voice over work. She acted (and still acts) in community and church plays and musicals. She played an organist on an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger.

Every Wednesday and Thursday at 6:15 a.m., she offers a devotional on KAAMAM. She does her book reviews. She’s an avid reader, as is her “sweet and handsome” husband, Charlie. “He’s read - let me see, 33 books this year,” she says “I’m way behind him.”

One reason is that she’s just busy. Another is that she doesn’t like the language in some newer ones. “Oh, the words they use!,” she says. “I won’t say bad words. I try to skip over them and substitute another word.”

What she does read without fail is the Bible, every day after she walks, on an exercise bike with Charlie next to her and reading on his.

Phillips and I go back to her kitchen. She asks if I’d like another glass of peach tea. I tell her thank you, but I need to leave. She puts the chocolate cookies I didn’t eat into a plastic bag, plus tomatoes and onions from the family farm. Oh yes, and my Do Bee ring.

“I’ve had the best life,” she says, almost whispering. “Oh Leslie, I just can’t tell you. I am so blessed.”

ActiveStyle, Pages 25 on 10/25/2010

Upcoming Events