A tribute to F3 Cardinal: 'Kind down to his bones'
A tribute to F3 Cardinal: 'Kind down to his bones'
He collapsed Wednesday in the gloom. 'Thank you for making his last days bright,' his wife wrote.
Taylor Phelps had a ginger beard, a knowing smile and soft eyes. F3 Cardinal, as he came to be known, spoke with a lilting Appalachian accent and “was kind down to his bones,” as one friend put it.
On the night before he led an F3 workout for the first time, his “VQ,” in F3 parlance, he shared a picture of the printout of his plans, which he had labored over for days. His wife had laminated the page for him; it was on yellow paper with AO Rampart’s logo in the corner. “He was so excited, and she was so supportive of him,” F3 Feeny said.
Cardinal arrived at the workout ahead of the 5:15 a.m. start time and joked with F3 Bobbitt, with whom he had shared an early version of the planned beatdown. He was nervous and excited to lead the men of F3 Knoxville for the first time. He talked about the positive changes in his health and personality in the month-plus since he joined F3 and how both of them explained his wife’s enthusiastic support.
The workout he planned was well-rounded, as befitting the man who created it, with burpees, core exercises, shoulder work, running and more. Cardinal was participating in MABA—Make America Burpee Again—a monthlong challenge in which participants complete 100 burpees a day in January, so on the margins of his workout “weinke” he noted the running total of burpees.
He appended one last set to the end — 20 burpees, to reach the magical 100 — with the notation, “as a group, if there’s time.”
There wasn’t.
Early in the workout, Cardinal, 36, collapsed. He died later at a hospital.
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Cardinal’s first connection with F3 came on November 28 at a Christmas parade in Kingston, Tennessee in which the local F3 had a float. F3 Piston sent him a note on Facebook Messenger, and it really was that easy to get him involved.
He showed up at a 7 a.m. workout on December 3. Rain poured down – the type of conditions even the most dedicated of us sleep through – and yet there Cardinal was, ready to get to work, ready to change his life. Piston had forgotten to tell Cardinal to bring gloves, but he handed over his spare set.
He slogged through the workout, and at the end of it, the men gathered around him for the ceremonial nicknaming. Cardinal—well, technically he wasn’t Cardinal yet—was a huge Kentucky Wildcats basketball fan. Kentucky’s big rival is the Louisville Cardinals. “As the one who ‘EH’d’ him,” Piston said, “I wanted to jab at that just a little.”
So he suggested Cardinal … and wondered what his reaction would be.
This is a huge moment in any F3 man’s life, and not a place for the thin-skinned or humorless. If you complain, the men in the circle will make the nickname much, much worse. You’re supposed to hate it, at first at least, but you learn to tolerate it, love it, embrace it, embody it.
Or not.
The man previously known as Taylor Phelps, new name, Cardinal, laughed and played along. But his Slack avatar showed he was not going to convert no matter what everyone called him: It’s a cartoon Kentucky Wildcat choking a Louisville Cardinal.
Because he joined after seeing an F3 float in a parade, sometimes the men of the gloom called him Grand Marshal Cardinal. Whatever his name, he was all in from the very beginning, even attempting to recruit new members though he was a newbie himself.
It was early in his fitness journey, so he brought up the rear in these dark and gloomy workout sessions. He poked fun at himself. “I’m slow but doing good,” he said often. He was never discouraged—tired, yes, exhausted, of course, questioning what in the world he was doing out there, amen to that—but never discouraged.
One of his friends admired the fact he made a point to always finish the last rep no matter how many men finished ahead of him. “He was always smiling, even when he wasn’t, if that makes sense,” Piston says.
In the six weeks of his F3 life, he missed only one scheduled workout. He overslept, but he was waiting at the restaurant when his F3 brothers arrived for the post-workout meal because he knew the social aspect of the group was critical, and he didn’t want to miss that. He ordered the F3 Special— black coffee, three eggs scrambled, and bacon, and joined the conversation.
He was building his body and his friendships at the same time. “He understood those times we get together for fellowship and laughter quickly turn into discipleship, or maybe you would call them therapy sessions,” one of them said. “Brothers helping brothers.”
A graduate of Clear Creek Baptist Bible College who also had a master’s degree in Biblical Exposition from the John W. Rawlins School of Divinity (Liberty University), Cardinal was pursuing his Ph.D in Biblical Exposition. He married his wife, Andrea, in 2006, and they have two children, Clay and Evie.
Cardinal moved to East Tennessee in June 2014, and his specialty was revitalization of small country churches like the one he was serving, Caney Ford Baptist Church in Harriman, Tennessee.
That’s soul-filling, God-honoring, kingdom-building work, but it also left him lonely. Many of his friends were also his church members, and he needed relationships with men outside of that realm. He couldn’t always be everyone’s pastor. He needed more peer-to-peer relationships, and that’s what F3 gave him. He found men to do life with, to share life with, to conquer struggles with.
He was an uncommonly good listener, gracious with his advice and gentle when he disagreed with someone—but also unafraid to say so when he did. He was an active participant in a small group of F3 men who wanted to practice new habits or get rid old ones. “One night I posted on the chat, ‘Sorry boys I failed today,’” one said. “His response was, ‘Not a failure, just a lesson brother.’ It was uplifting, just like he was at our workouts each time we met. This High Impact Man always had a positive attitude and uplifting spirit.”
He posted on social media about MABA and said his daughter was helping him do the burpees. “It was so sweet. I commented and told him he was ‘killing it,’ and his response was ‘My body thinks I’m a darn fool’ with a smiling emoji,” Piston says.
In the hours after his death, his wife, Andrea, whose dad died the week before her husband, picked up his phone. She clicked on Slack, the app F3 members use to communicate each other. F3 Knoxville’s Slack had already turned into a virtual wake for their fallen brother. These men she barely knew, if at all, were celebrating the man she loved and missed so desperately already.
“Your messages of support and love make my heart ache a little less this morning,” she wrote under his cartoon avatar at 8:41 Thursday morning. “Taylor had really struggled with loneliness. It’s so hard to be a Pastor and your only friends are your church members. He had been happier than I had seen him in so long when he found you guys. Thank you for making his last days bright.”
To donate to a GoFundMe set up for Cardinal’s family, click here.
From KickFlip, Nantan of Knoxville:
On Saturday, January 14, we will have a Tribute workout for Cardinal. The men who knew him best will finish what he started Wednesday and lead us in the workout he designed. If you are in the area and interested in attending, here are the details:
Tribute Q
7:00 a.m.
“Rampart AO” - Fort Southwest Point
1225 S Kentucky St, Kingston, TN 37763
The funeral service will be held on Saturday afternoon.
Receiving of Friends, 3:00 p.m.-5:00 p.m.
Funeral, 5:00 p.m.
South Harriman Baptist Church
626 Ruritan Rd. Harriman, TN 37748
A sea of red
The outpouring of support from across the world after Cardinal’s death has been nothing short of amazing. Countless men have completed the workout he designed, and many of them donned red in his honor.
More on that in the next newsletter. For now, I’ll just say that his brothers in the gloom don’t know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of hundreds upon hundreds of men wearing red, the color of the Louisville Cardinals, who were not, in fact, Cardinal's team at all. “It’s a lovely tribute in the truest fashion of good-natured F3 ribbing,” F3 Bobbitt said. “I’m sure he’s in heaven humbled by all of this but also shaking his head at us.”
Pursuing an unassailable total
MABA’s theme of Fall down. Get back up. Together has never been more real.
This is from F3 Waldo of JeffCo:
We have all been heartbroken by the news of the death of F3 Cardinal.
He was one of the 700+ participants from 61 regions who know this about the burpee; it is representative of life and the F3 credo; men falling down and getting back up, Together!
Multiple AOs across the nation have stepped up to finish his VQ and even PAX not participating in MABA have been cranking out hundreds of burpees. The JeffCo (Suburb of St. Louis, MO) PAX wanted to do something to help honor Cardinal along with the outpouring of donations to his family. One of Cardinal’s plans that were left unfinished were his 3,100 Burpees this month for MABA.
Through the end of the month, F3JeffCo is finishing each beatdown with a prayer or moment of silence, raising our intentions to Cardinal, his family and his church. This is followed by 10 burpees by each of the PAX. These 10 burpees will not count to our own MABA goals but instead will be our gift to Cardinal and his Knoxville brothers.
We’d love to have you join us in this 10-burpee finishing touch and prayer/moment of silence. The Q of each beatdown should report the number of burpees to a specified member of that region. Once the numbers are gathered each day, the region representative will update Cardinal’s MABA numbers.
We ask you to use this method instead of entering them yourselves as too many people updating could break the MABA score sheet website. Our goal is to have Cardinal finish the month with an unassailable total that will long be remembered.
Finally, if you have not yet signed up for MABA you can still join us for the some of the fun and competition. Come join your brothers. Register at https://f3maba.com/signup/2023.
Logistics
To add to his total, click on https://f3maba.com/signup/2023.
Choose Knoxville as the region and click "I've already signed up."
Scroll down under that to Cardinal and click on his name.
Then add your total to whatever the running total is for that date.
For example, if it's January 14 and says 100 and you need to add 110, make it 210.
Hit "submit" at the end.
Late to the game but I'll try and get F3 Hampton Roads on board with this tribute to Cardinal.
A beautiful tribute, brother! I'm so glad he got to experience F3 and that he had the opportunity to go out as a leader in the company of his brothers. Thanks for sharing his F3 journey and your experience of him. I never met him, but he was my brother, too.