Somerville’s own Phil Reavis is not only an Olympic high jumper, but also an accomplished jazz musician, poet and educator. Now, a new exhibit at the Somerville Museum, aptly titled “Above and Beyond,” on view through July 8, is honoring his achievements.
Growing up in Somerville in the 1940s, Reavis’ childhood was spent running around on the city’s many playgrounds. It was an invitation to a high-jump competition by a playground director that inspired him to pursue an athletic career and eventually led to a full-ride athletic scholarship to Villanova. When a recruiter came to his family’s home to make the offer, Reavis said, “When the door closed, my mom looked at me and said, ‘Well, you’re going to go to Villanova.’”
“I didn’t think I was going to be an Olympian,” Reavis admitted.
But in 1956, he headed to Australia to represent the United States in high jump. The time competing abroad led to coaching opportunities in Southeast Asia. Reavis started in Cambodia, following a tip from the Villanova recruiter, and went on to coach and teach in Vietnam, Laos and most recently Macau, where he’s resided for 30 years.
Apart from his athletic adventures, Reavis found time to pursue music, specifically the jazz tenor saxophone. He started in high school, he says, where he faced overt racism when the school tried to keep Black students out of the band.
But wasn’t until he was in Macau that he was able to fully explore performance with a jazz club and, eventually, his band called The Bridge.
“I started off playing and as we played in these different places, the question became, ‘Well, what should we call our group?’ We, at the time, had a steady gig in a hotel, but we had to go over a bridge every time we went there,” Reavis said. “I said, ‘Hey, we go over this bridge all the time, why don’t we call ourselves The Bridge?’ And that’s how it happened.”
His creativity is also expressed through poetry. When Reavis was living and working in the United States, he was mystified by workplace culture and the grandstanding that happened in meetings.
“Nothing ever gets done,” he said. “Things are said to make you look bright, and then when you get to your office, nothing happened.”
Reavis soon found a way to channel these frustrations with office life.
“Back then, I was reading stuff from the Black Panther Party. You had guys that wrote poetry, poetry I had never seen done this way before. And I decided to write down notes. ... My poetry was really an attack on these obscure, crazy ideas that weren’t going to go anywhere.”
His poetic work later on, written about his time in Macau, got published, landing Reavis’ poetry well beyond the confines of his notebooks.
The quote he included in his high school yearbook is displayed in the Somerville Museum exhibit: “The day most wholly lost is that which is spent without laughter.”
Reavis said, today, this still holds true. “The easiest way to show how happy you are, and [how] comfortable you are, is with your laughter.”
