Nash Phillips began building houses in Austin, Texas, in 1945 to meet the needs of returning WW II veterans.

When I first met Nash Phillips in 1984, I was a young Chicago-based journalist (recently hired by Professional Builder), making my first trip into the Great State of Texas. Editor in chief Roy Diez had assigned me to learn everything there was to know about Texas housing markets. Undaunted, I looked for brains to pick and found Nash Phillips.

Why not? Nash Phillips Copus (Nash’s iconic partnership with Clyde Copus) was the largest private builder in the state, with operations in practically every Texas market and revenues that would hit $450 million that year. At age 64, Nash seemed to know everyone in the Texas housing industry. The mystery is why he would take any interest helping me learn about it. But Nash was also always eager to learn as much as he could. He never stopped, never thought he had the answers. That may be the best lesson he taught me — that consumer preferences and housing markets are constantly changing.

We bonded in our eagerness to learn. Nash never promoted NPC product. He was excited to accompany me when I shopped markets all over the state, and he’d steer me to the best projects of his competitors. When I would fly into Houston, he would meet me at the first project on my itinerary, driving in from Austin in that massive Lincoln that seemed half a block long.

In those days, I prided my ability to walk five models in a trap in 15 minutes. Nash would sometimes stay with me as I bounded from room to room, but more often he’d stay behind in the sales center after I picked up floor plans and a price list. He’d already seen the product. What he wanted to do was talk to the salespeople and the shoppers. He taught me how to do that, and why it’s important. After spending time with Nash, I made sure that my shopping trips always began and ended on a weekend, which is when the sales centers are full of house hunters.

Eventually, I took to riding in the Lincoln, even though I didn’t like the image it projected that he was in control of my itinerary. He wasn’t. He would go wherever I wanted. But he knew the way, which was a huge advantage. It was rare indeed for me to direct him to a project he hadn’t already visited. All he asked of me was to share what I thought of each development, and how what Texas builders were doing stacked up against projects in Denver, St. Louis and Chicago. I was glad to do that, thrilled that a giant of the industry valued my opinion.

In the Austin American-Statesman’s obituary, Nash’s daughter, Elizabeth Horne, is quoted saying that her father was “probably the most honest person I’ve ever known … it never occurred to him that anyone would be dishonest.” And she added, “He was so very interested in people … he’d know their life story by the time he was through.”

That’s certainly Nash. He loved people, and they loved him. NPC was the university that trained a whole army of Texas home builders how to please customers. I still run into them all over Texas, and in Phoenix and Denver as well, men and women who learned the housing business from Nash Phillips. There are still people who think I nominated NPC for PB’s Builder of the Year award in 1984 because Nash did so much for me, and because he was my friend. It’s really not true. I nominated Nash because he did so much for Texas, and for home buyers (and builders) everywhere. NPC won that award in a slam dunk. All I had to do was mention the name.

A couple of years later, NPC was gone, caught up in the maelstrom of the Texas housing crash of the late 1980s. It was the largest private bankruptcy in Texas history with more than 150 creditors listed. Nash and Clyde had signed personally on notes all over the state. But by 1993, Nash’s comeback company, Wilshire Homes (a joint venture with son-in-law Ed Horne), was back on top of the Austin market with $59.8 million in revenue.

Anyone who thought Nash Phillips would stay down on the carpet for long, even in his 70s, just didn’t know the man!