By Bob Morgan

FOLEY, Ala. — After being empty for eight years, the old Presbyterian church building located at West Violet Avenue and North Alston Street will once again be occupied.

The Phonebook team from left to right, sitting: Michelle Ward, Susan Willingham, Diane O’Connor, Jody Horner, Keri Gregory, Shannon Brackett, Michelle Fountain; standing: Bob Smith, Bill Alford, Jane Capsis, Glenn Ross, Linda Samples, Ken Harrin, Phillip Colquette, Pat Colquette, Lloyd Lammle, Melinda Banks, Andrew Hudson.

Perhaps it’s only right the business going into the building is referred to by its owner and founder as one of the most blessed commercial enterprises in the area.

Actually, Phil Colquette of Gulf Publishing Co. speaks of blessings, good luck and the “Yellow Pages gods” interchangably when he recounts the good fortune experienced by the company he founded in 1995 to provide directory publishing services for GulfTel Communications.

“Finally, for the first time since ‘95, we’ll all be under the same roof,” said Phil of the Gulf Publishing staff moving into the church building.

That will come to pass in earnest, however, after eight months of renovation in the 10,000 sq. ft. building that dates back to the 1940s. And no doubt the church building’s “one roof” will prove to be another blessing for Gulf Publishing, but it’s doubtful it will ever replace the memories and laughs of the sharply slanted roof that created what Phil and his wife, Pat, call the “Triangle Room.”

It’s all about history for the Colquettes and the ups and downs along the way. At the start, Gulf Publishing Co.’s staff was five. Today it’s 18, but everything began with a Yellow Pages salesman and a hobby.

The salesman was Phil, on the road 260 or so days a year. He had been working for Mast Advertising and Publishing for 15 years. He was in West Liberty, Ky., when Mast contacted him and told him they had a new phone directory on the Alabama Gulf Coast. Phil admits today that, back then, he didn’t know Alabama had a coastline. As things turned out, he came to the area in 1985 as a Yellow Pages salesman.

“I just traveled wherever they (Mast) sent me, and one of the places was Foley, Alabama.”

“They would send me places for weeks at a time,” said Phil of Mast. To “keep from going crazy” during those extended stays, he took up photography. He would pass the time taking shots of local interest wherever he might be. As luck would have it, it was a picture that paved the way for him to meet John Snook, president of what was then Gulf Telephone Co., and his wife Marjorie.

As Phil recalls, Gulf Telephone’s general manager walked past one day and saw a photo he had taken. She wanted it for the cover of the telephone directory. Over time, Phil would do five covers for the Snooks.

“It elevated me from being just another Yellow Pages salesman,” said Phil of that first telephone book cover.

In time, Mast fell on difficult times and urged Phil to find another directory company for which to work. Things were clear to him.

“I wanted to make my livelihood here and I wanted to work for GulfTel,” he says today. “Just let me do the directory.”

As it turned out, the dream came true.

“LITTLE WHITE LIE”

From 1985-94, Phil lived in the South Baldwin area for four or five months a year. Then he would return to Murfreesboro, Tenn., where he and Pat resided. Then, in 1994, they moved here.

“We took a big chance,” Phil said. The following year, they started Gulf Publishing with $20,000 of their own money ... sort of.

Phil calls it a “little white lie” that he told GulfTel officials back then that he had enough money to get his publishing enterprise going. It wasn’t nearly enough to publish the directory.

“Here’s a phone company that could have any publisher in the world and they give it to their Yellow Pages salesman. All I ever did was go out and call on the accounts. Not only did they give me this contract, they loaned me the money (to get started). They gave me one year to see what I could do.”

The “Triangle Room” was the attic in the Colquettes house in Gulf Shores. Up until 2005, Gulf Publishing’s accounting, marketing and such was run out of that office where tilted heads were just part of the work environment.

Over time, a house on West Jessamine Avenue was purchased and renovated and provided enough room for the sales people and sales manager.

Gulf Publishing Co. was never owned by GulfTel, Phil says. Rather, Gulf Publishing is a vendor to GulfTel.

“GulfTel was about family and everything like that,” Phil said. “I loved that. I thought I would have been with GulfTel for the rest of my life, but, as you know, John (Snook) passed and Marjorie (Snook) sold, and we had new owners, Madison River, and now they’ve sold and we’re under CenturyTel.”

THREE MONTHS

BEFORE THE DEMISE

When Madison River bought GulfTel in the late 1990s, the new company used another directory company. According to Phil, three months before what he calls the “demise of Gulf Publishing,” a company out of England purchased the Madison River directory company and said they didn’t want to do utility books.

“We were dead, we were gone, and there was nothing we could do, and out of the blue ... it opened up for us to stay alive,” Phil said.

CenturyTel, the fourth largest telephone company in the world, bought GulfTel last year from Madison River.

“We were very excited about the opportunity to prove ourselves to them,” Phil said of CenturyTel.

According to Phil, CenturyTel has 240-plus directories done by the same publisher.

“We’re the only one that does this directory right here for them,” Phil said. “It says volumes about them that they’ve kept us around.”

Phil said CenturyTel has brought in lots of creative ideas and marketing strategies.

“It’s been wonderful all the things they’ve brought to the table,” he said.

In Phil’s opinion, Gulf Publishing’s secret is summed up in the three words: “We live here.

“We only have one book, and we only have one chance, and we work it all year long.”

HISTORY BOOKS

Gulf Publishing’s new directory has been wrapped up and things have shifted to the proof mode now.

The first telephone directory Phil had a part in, 1986, had 350 white and Yellow pages. The new one to be published by Gulf Publishing has 1,398 pages.

For Phil, a telephone book is a history book of sorts. He sees trends reflected in the directory, like the 40 pages of attorneys and the largest class of listings, namely, restaurants.

Back in 1997 Phil and Pat, a partner in Gulf Publishing and the company secretary-treasurer, were in Las Vegas to receive the Gold APPY Award, the so-called “Oscar of the Yellow Pages Industry.” Phil recalls it being something special to be at the event with hundreds of billion dollar publishers and to see them puzzle over who and what Gulf Publishing Co. was when the company banner was unfurled as winner of the prestigious award.

But Phil, a professed voracious reader who is always looking for something interesting to put in his directory, said a local compliment almost tops the APPY.

It came from a woman who recognized him out in public and told him his telephone directory had replaced the Reader’s Digest as book of choice in her bathroom.

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