Danny Phillips

Owner of Danny's Volks Stuff and lifetime Amarillo resident

When Danny Phillips’ parents divorced and moved away from Amarillo, he decided at 15 years old that he wasn’t going to leave. Emancipated and under the wings of his grandparents, he got a job at the parts counter at a Volkswagen dealership and started what would end up being a lifelong career.

“I was an ITC student at Amarillo High,” says Danny, leaning back casually in an office chair next to the parts counter at Danny’s Volks Stuff on 6th. “That stood for Industrial Training Cooperative. It’d go to class in the mornings and then in the afternoons go to work. I worked at the dealership for 15 years, and then I opened up this place.”

One of Danny’s greatest influences in life was his grandfather, C.E. Birkmeyer, who built the building on 6th Street to be a hardware store. When C.E. passed away, Danny’s grandmother when on to rent the building to various businesses until he finally bought it from her to start his own business. Thirty years later, Danny’s Volks Stuff remains the only place in town Volkswagen owners can get their vehicles or scooters - which he sells – serviced exclusively by folks who know the brand. As the “only show in town,” Volks-speaking, Danny has a faithful base of customers including a few he used to wait on at the parts counter 45 years ago.

“This is what I learned to do and I like it,” he recalls. “I never looked for anything else except one time when I had an itch I had to scratch in 1988.”

That itch turned into his seven year spell as a nurse. At 38 years old, married with two boys, Danny enrolled at Amarillo College and subsequently graduated with a nursing and EMT degree. He toyed briefly with the idea of medical school, but that meant selling his Volkswagen shop and moving away from Amarillo. That wasn’t an option.

“I like people. I like helping them, and I wanted to see if I could something different from working on cars. And I did.”

Danny left nursing, went back to Volks Stuff full time and the thriving business has since afforded Danny and Margaret, his wife of 35 years, the means to travel extensively. In fact, they just returned from an anniversary cruise to Costa Rica and Belize where the highlight of the trip was zip-lining through a rain forest.

“You know, we do a lot of traveling, especially in recent years, so it’s not like I’ve only been here and don’t know about the rest of the world,” says Danny. “Generally speaking, the people in Amarillo are much nicer than they are anywhere we’ve ever been. I never really considered moving away because wise people told me it would be a mistake. They said it was better to stay in your hometown and plant your feet where you’re at. I took that to heart. Overall, it’s one of the nicest places to be.”

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