Curtis and Phyllis Mathews still enjoy telling the story of what happened when they first saw each other in Columbus in summer 1963. Curtis says he was smitten the moment he laid eyes on her. For Phyllis, it wasn’t quite that way.
“I was playing basketball outdoors at an elementary school, and I saw Phyllis just as I was getting ready to dunk,” Curtis said. “I was really impressed at the sight of her because she presented herself in a neat, attractive way. I was so distracted I missed the dunk.
“I couldn’t keep my mind on basketball after that, so I decided to follow her home from a respectable distance. She lived on East Livingston Avenue, and after she went into her house and closed the door, I knocked and introduced myself. She slammed the door in my face.
“She lived on the east side of town, and I lived on the west side, so I had an awfully long walk home. I was feeling what the old Wide World of Sports introduction called ‘the agony of defeat.’’’
“I just didn’t know him then,” Phyllis said. “Fortunately, he didn’t give up on me.”
A few months later, Curtis felt the other half of the Wide World phrase – “the thrill of victory” – after the two were properly introduced.
“We met at a social gathering, and I remembered who he was,” Phyllis said. “He was nice and polite, handsome, very mannerly, and you could tell he had good home training. I met his family, and they were beautiful people, so we started dating.”
Curtis graduated from Central High School and Phyllis Anderson from Bishop Hartley High School in 1964. Curtis then went to Central State University in Wilberforce, where he received a degree in product management in 1968, while Phyllis worked in a clerical position for Nationwide Insurance. The couple were married on Aug. 24, 1968 at Columbus Holy Rosary Church.
“We can’t remember who the priest for the ceremony was,” Phyllis said. “He was a last-minute replacement for the one we were supposed to have.”
After college, Curtis got a job at the former Western Electric plant on Columbus’ east side. Phyllis left the work force to care for the couple’s two sons, Roderic, now 53, and Casey, now 50. The couple, both 77, have one grandson and one granddaughter.
Curtis stayed at Western Electric for about four years and was in charge of a department that produced relays for telephone circuits.
“I was successful there and was moving up the management ladder quickly and realized I had the ability to work well with people and form them into a team,” he said. “I also knew that companies were anxious to hire Black people with that type of skill and that what I studied in college made me well-qualified for a position in human resources (HR).”
He left Western Electric to become assistant HR director at the former Warren-Teed Pharmaceuticals plant in Columbus and said he learned quickly there that his instincts were correct. After a year or two, he was promoted to the same position at the Philadelphia plant of Warren-Teed’s parent company, Rohm and Haas, which is mainly known for making chemicals and got out of the pharmaceuticals business and sold the Columbus plant in 1977.
He stayed in Philadelphia for several years, then went to Rohm and Haas’ Louisville, Kentucky plant for a year or two and returned to Philadelphia as HR director of the company’s research division, the position he held when he left the firm in 1997 after more than 20 years with the company.
“I felt I’d done all the jobs I wanted to do at Rohm and Haas and thought the insurance business was another area where my skills would be useful,” he said. Cigna, a Philadelphia-based insurance company, hired him as assistant vice president for human relations in 1997, and he stayed in that position for 10 years until retiring in 2007.
“I reported yearly to the company board on all aspects of our hiring, from clerical jobs to managers to high-ranking executives,” he said. “I knew one reason I was appointed to the job was that the company wanted to hire more minorities and thought my influence would help, but I brought people of all types to Cigna because I felt they would be the best choice for the company regardless of any other factor.
“We wanted to make sure we were on the cutting edge of hiring the best people. My attitude was ‘Don’t tell me who we need to hire. I want the people who will be most effective in strengthening the company.’”
After retirement, Curtis served as an HR consultant for companies for several years. In 2014, after about 40 years away from their hometown, the couple made perhaps their most significant change by moving back to Columbus.
“My wife brought me back here,” Curtis said. “We always felt close to Columbus because this is where our families were.”
The couple had lived in Philadelphia’s New Jersey suburbs while Curtis commuted. “Phyllis didn’t really want to move (from Columbus),” he said, “so I promised her that when I retired, we’d go back to Columbus, and she didn’t forget that promise.
“Probably the most difficult time in our marriage was when we first moved to New Jersey,” he said. “Our home was supposed to be ready about a week after we came to Philadelphia, but it ended up that we had to stay in a motel for three or four months until it was finished.
“Both the boys got pretty sick, so we had to find a doctor. Our parents weren’t nearby, so out of necessity, we depended on each other.”
“It was just the two of us and our boys for so many years, so we had to get to know each other well and to share and discuss just about everything,” Phyllis said.
“We saved each other,” Curtis said. “With no one you know that’s close to you, you have to pull together. That’s what we did, and it made us a real team.”
“While I was raising the children, we did travel a lot, and we made plenty of friends everywhere, but in the end, everything came down to the two of us and being able to work toward the same goals,” Phyllis said.
“Unlike Phyllis, I’m not a cradle Catholic,” Curtis said. “I grew up going to Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Columbus. But for years, I felt like I was Catholic because of her and because we raised our sons in the Catholic faith.
“When we got back to Columbus, Phyllis started going to St. Dominic Church, and I began thinking, ‘Phyllis and our sons are Catholic, so are the grandkids and the rest of her family. Everyone else is Catholic, so why not me?’ I started taking RCIA classes and became a Catholic about six years ago.
“I joined the Gospel choir at St. Dominic’s, and one reason was because it’s a form of payback to Central State. I received a scholarship to be in the choir there 60 years ago, and that money enabled me to get an education that allowed me to get my start and to come all this way.
“If there’s any secret to our marriage, it’s that we’ve always been able to talk with each other and to know the other person would listen,” he said. “Having that trust in each other means that we don’t need to have a lot of other people around. We’ve always been content to talk and spend time together, and I’d tell any young couple that’s what makes a marriage work.
“I feel tremendously blessed having come from what used to be called ‘the Bottoms’ (now known by its original name of Franklinton), to marry the woman I love, to have the kind of career I’ve had, and to see our sons graduate from college, our grandson in college and our granddaughter going there next year,” Curtis said.
“But we both know Phyllis and I are not the ones responsible for this. It wouldn’t have happened without the assistance of a lot of other people, and most importantly without the help of a higher power who has given us gifts we have tried to put to use and helped us be satisfied with what we have.”