With an undying passion for music, Phillip Calvin Vails was hoping for a chance to touch many lives through his lyrics. But his life was taken from him June 11, 2006, almost one year to the day he graduated from Southfield High.

Vails - also known as “Preach” – collapsed while playing a game of basketball at an elementary school in Redford. His autopsy showed heart arrhythmia. He was widely known for his warming smile that could light up a room.

Vails managed to maintain a positive outlook despite many hardships in his life, said his former drama teacher, Brenda Perryman, who spoke to him the day before he died.

Perryman says she always saw “light” in Philip and describes him as her “Jack of all Trades.” He appeared in several of her spring musicals, and she says she has many plans to honor Vails’ life throughout the year because “to know him was to love him.”

By all accounts, Phillip Vails led a difficult life. His mother was murdered when he was 12. He spent the next year of his life with his great-grandmother. She, too, passed away, leaving young Philip to be placed in foster care.

In an interview with The Jay a year before his death, Vails said he had a difficult time finding a home: “No one wanted to take in a hungry black man.”

When relatives were unable to help, Vails was eventually taken in by the Coopers, a fifty-something caucasian couple living in Southfield.

Vails spent most of his teen-age years living with guardians Paul and Linda Cooper. Through all this and so much more he never managed to lose his smile, said Paul Cooper. When Vails’ whole world was turned upside down, he never gave up, Cooper said. “He was a very caring, sensitive person who was gifted at writing music.”

    Phillip Vails was widely known through the halls of Southfield High school. His involvement included plays, musicals, Thespian Troupe 1509 and the Southfield choir. He had a strong passion for acting, but music filled his heart from a young age.

   Schoolmate Frank Tramble was best friends with Vails and co-starred in school plays with him. Tramble says he feels like he has lost a part of himself with Vails’ passage. “Every day is a struggle. (When) you spend six years with a person, you’re bound to them. We shared a passion of music. He gave me my passion and inspiration.”

Vails was buried in Detroit in Woodlawn Cemetery, which is off of Woodward Avenue.