'Sarge' charms Wilson students with grill skills

An imposing figure stands poised behind the grill as students flood into Wilcox Dining Hall. He is 6'3" and 47-years-old and wears checkered pants and a long white apron spattered with grease. His lips curl into a smile as Felicia Morris '07 walks up to the grill, and he extends his arm to give her a "pound" on the knuckles.

Morris doesn't need to say a word; Sarge simply hands her a grilled cheese sandwich.

"I know my people, and what they want. I can put their food out before they ask," said the man born Phillip Peagler, but known to students as Sarge.

"I used to get a grilled cheese every day, but then Sarge started yelling at me because it wasn't healthy," Felicia said.

Peagler — who earned his nickname by wearing an army jacket to work when he first came to the University — has been behind a dining hall grill for 11 years. He works from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. ten months out of the year, and usually stays on during the summer months in the dish room.

As a grill cook, Peagler mans the grill on weekdays and omelette bar on weekends, prepares the daily "Showthyme" specials and comes up with grill specials each day.

"We like to come up with our own recipes that kids have never had," Peagler said. One of Peagler's creations was a chicken salad with parmesan peppercorn dressing.

Al Brown '05, a student worker in the dining hall, has know Peagler for the past two years.

"Sarge calls me L.A. because that's where I'm from. I don't think he even knows my real name. He's always asking me to bring him stuff back from home and how the L.A. ladies are," Brown said.

Peagler credits his long stint at the University to his love for the students. "I'm a people person. I love to have fun. I love to talk a lot of trash too. It makes my day go by," he said.

However, Sarge shows his love for some students more than others, and some students said they dislike Peagler's strict control of the kitchen and his refusal to give students seconds.

He admits that he sometimes "shows favoritism" and gives specific students a pound on the knuckles or "maybe two pieces of chicken if it's not busy."

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Though Peagler never went to culinary school, he said he has enjoyed cooking and grilling ever since he was a kid. "I came from a big family of seven kids, and I always watched my mom cook," he said.

After the students are fed and the grill is spick and span, Peagler drives home to Trenton to eat his dinner, prepared by his wife Louise.

Like many University students, Peagler likes "to have fun and to party," but not in the way students might expect. Peagler likes to lay back and listen to classic music, like Al Green, Isaac Hayes or the Commodores. "I don't understand hip hop. The lyrics are real fast and all combined together," he said.

Peagler is not an original resident of the Garden State — he hails from Greenville, Ala. He graduated from Greenville High School in 1974 and began working in furniture delivery while taking night classes in acting and physical education at a local community college.

However, Peagler realized he could not support his family on the salary and enlisted in the Army in 1979. He left four years later, though, because he "couldn't adapt to it. I don't like people hollering at me. I got a quick temper," he said.

Peagler did factory and maintenance work until he married Louise Brown, his second wife, in 1990. He moved to Trenton with her and started work at the University in 1993.

Now, Peagler's main goal is to "get my 20 to 25 years in so I can retire with pay and move back to Alabama," he said.