Phillip Folks, who died April 13 of cancer at age 41, used the discipline he learned serving in the U.S. Navy to instill independence in his children.
His funeral will be at 8 a.m. Tuesday at Trevino Funeral Home, 300 S. Logan St.
At Aurora Central High School, he played defensive end for the school football team. Diminutive and wiry, Folks surprised opponents who expected him to be a pushover.
“He was the smallest one on the team but the toughest kid,” said longtime friend Tony Montoya. “I was really good at football, but you couldn’t get around Phillip at all when he was defensive end. He was focused. Determined at all times. Stubborn.”
After graduating from high school in 1984, Folks joined the military, serving as a petty officer first class in the Navy for 15 years before returning to Colorado.
He worked as a mail sorter, eyeing ZIP codes as envelopes whipped past his station in the cavernous General Mail Facility in north Denver.
Folks and his wife, Brenda, had five children. They took in their godson, José Silva, when he was 6 years old, and put him through high school and college.
As a teenager, daughter Serena Folks fell in with a rough crowd. When she got into trouble, her father rescued her.
“Everyone else thought I was someone to give up on, but my dad always had faith and said he believed in me,” she said. “Sometimes, he’d start crying and tell me he didn’t want me to turn out bad. Then, I found out my dad was sick.”
That was less than two years ago. Phillip Folks, then 39, was diagnosed with cancer of the small bowel. The news followed another disappointment – Silva’s unsuccessful but plucky 2003 campaign for a seat on the Denver Public Schools Board of Education.
The diagnosis brought the Folkses closer together. Phillip and his wife repaired their strained marriage, and he renewed his relationship with his children.
“He spent more time with us after he got sick,” said son Phillip Folks Jr., 15. “Like, when I came home from school, he’d ask how was my day. Before, he usually never sat down and talked to me.”
Serena Folks, 18, saw her father in a new light.
“My dad, to me, is like the most innocent type in our whole family,” she said. “He didn’t do drugs or smoke cigarettes or smoke weed. He didn’t go to bars every night. He put everyone in his family before he put himself. Made sure we had food to eat and that our lights were on. I didn’t see before how he struggled. Ever since he got sick, it’s like that song, ‘I was blind but now I see.”‘
Besides his wife, daughter, son and godson, he is survived by daughters Danielle Folks and Maria Folks, both of Aurora; son Anthony Folks of Aurora; brothers Paul Folks and Leo Folks, both of Denver; and sister Debbie Folks of Denver.
Staff writer Claire Martin can be reached at 303-820-1477 or cmartin@denverpost.com.
