One excelled at football and baseball – played center field and batted lead-off because he was lightning-bolt quick at stealing bases, and was football defensive player of the year as a senior for his work at cornerback and safety.

The other Phil White was asked by his English Literature teacher if he’d rather wait in the library during class, instead of study about poets and death, since White, 16 years old in March of 1965, had just been diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma and the prognosis was cruel.

White, the athlete, excelled on the field despite a chronic knee injury and breaking his left collarbone. Twice.

White, the student, chose to stay in English class. He also chose to live.

For White’s efforts to beat other teams as an athlete, and his ability to beat cancer as a man, he gained a place in the Mount Holly Sports Hall of Fame.

“I was one of those kids who could take two steps and be at full speed, so they would hope I got on,” he says of his baseball success. “I don’t know how many bases I stole. I remained the first hitter, and was always surprised the four years I played. It was like, ‘Wow! I hit the ball.’

“In football, I think the most fun was just playing together and surviving the practices and wind sprints that (2007 HOF inductee) Coach Delmer Wiles put us through. He was a retired drill instructor from the Marines.

“But I have a very checkered history with illness and injury throughout high school. I was that guy who always had the illness or injury.”

White, 70, played for MHHS from 1962 through 1966. The baseball team was conference champs his sophomore, junior and senior seasons and the 1964-67 teams are Hall of Fame inductees for their four consecutive conference championships, 40-10 overall record and 4-3 record in the state playoffs.

White and his cousin, Tony Leroy McConnell, the pitcher, were born about 40 hours apart, he says, and were like twins, “But he’s the twin who got the brains. I think what I valued most was just the relationships and the brotherhood on those teams.”

White’s cancer diagnosis was terminal.

“They sent me home to die, and I didn’t. So they gave me six months, and I lived, which obviously was a surprise to the doctors,” he says.

McConnell got a ride to Oral Roberts University, and White followed with a scholarship, too. It was the era of the Vietnam War. “You could get a college deferment if you went and maintained a 2.0. You wouldn’t get drafted until you got out of college,” White says.

He left Oral Roberts after two years, but when his draft number was called, he was politely told “no thanks.”

“I went for the preliminary physical and testing and was given a 4-F, not physically capable of serving in the military because of my knee, and the cancer I contracted when I was 16 still was in the red zone, the danger zone, at 19, so I went back to college,” he says.

The path led to Tulsa.

“When you’re a kid in America growing up, your dream is not to end up in Oklahoma, most likely, but I came out here for school, for baseball on scholarship, and thought I’d never come back,” he says, “but I came back for two weeks in 1984, and this is the longest stay-cation in my life.”

White went to grad school at the University of Oklahoma to become a clinical therapist.

“When you come to see me, it’s about being insane and becoming more sane. We can at least aspire to sanity, whether we get it or not,” he says. “That’s my crazy work in life. And I worked with the chronically and mentally ill for many years, then went into private practice, and now I’m currently working with people coming out of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It’s all been fascinating the whole time, from the mentally ill to people who are felons. It’s quite a population.”

He keeps in touch, some, with the guys from Mount Holly.

“I just really enjoyed making it through the ups and downs. My most special memory on the teams was in the spring, we were playing ball or doing our spring training, and I was diagnosed and the guys all rallied around me,” he says. “They signed a baseball that I’ve kept with me through the years, and for me personally, that was the most special experience, from their visiting me and being considerate to me, and to sign that baseball and give it to me.

“Since I was a kid, I’ve moved so many times, but I’ve made it a point to never get rid of that ball.”