Gregg Phillips State Farm will celebrate 25 years of serving the Ruston/Lincoln Parish community this week with an open house celebration on Thursday, August 1.
The State Farm office is located at 212 W. Florida, and all are welcome to drop by.
When Gregg opened his office on August 1, 1999, he was just starting his family and was early in his career with State Farm. His career had started a few years earlier in 1994, when Gregg was hired as a fire claims specialist with State Farm in Baton Rouge. After several years down south, Gregg moved to what was the regional office in Monroe.
It was in Monroe that Gregg entered the agency training program and was eventually chosen as an agent.
“Agency had always been something I wanted to do because I love working with people,” Gregg said. “Being involved in the community has always been important to me, and being an agent would allow me to do that. And the idea of doing it in a college town was also a dream of mine.”
When Gregg’s father-in-law, Gerald Long, announced his retirement as a State Farm agent here in Ruston, the company offered Gregg the opportunity to step in and take his place.
He said even though there were three other established agents-Jean Hollis (who has since retired), Skip Russell and Robert Temple, already here in Ruston, they welcomed him in and encouraged him toward success.
“The other agents have always been so good to me and my family” Gregg said. “It’s one other thing that has made serving in Ruston so special to me.”
Gregg jumped into the community as a father of three young sons, ages 5, 3 and 1. He served in his church First Baptist as a Deacon and a Sunday school teacher. He also coached Dixie Baseball, served as president of the Ruston/Lincoln Chamber of Commerce as well as the Ruston Rotary Club, all while building his agency. And if all that was not enough, in 2003, he and his wife welcomed their fourth and final son into their household.
Those four sons are all grown up now. They are scattered from Springfield, Mo. (Josh and family), Little Rock, Ar. (Sam and family), Baton Rouge (Jacob and wife), while the youngest, Caleb, is a senior at Louisiana Tech studying mechanical engineering. Gregg and his wife of 34 years, Andrea, have four grandchildren and are expecting a fifth grandchild in October.
“I am just so incredibly blessed and grateful for the opportunity to live and serve here in Ruston and especially to raise our family here. I cannot think of anywhere else I would rather have been,” said Gregg.
Gregg currently serves as the president of the Lincoln Parish School Board, a position that he said provides him an opportunity to give back to the community that has given him so much.
“I want to create opportunities for our young people to be able to live in a place as wonderful as the one I have experienced,” said Gregg.
And serving on the school board allows him to have some impact on just that.
Gregg would like to personally invite the community to stop by the office on Thursday and just allow him to say thanks for being Good Neighbors for 25 years, and he hopes for many more years to come.
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