The Phillies hit a home run by delivering a new van to the Strawberry Mansion Learning Center

Kevin Upshur always listened to his mother. Alarmed by the violence she saw in their Strawberry Mansion neighborhood, she often urged him: “We have to do something to help the kids.”

After Shirley Upshur died, Upshur converted the neighborhood corner bar his family once operated into an after-school haven for children.

The Strawberry Mansion Learning Center, at 2946 W. Dauphin St., opened in 2008.

Since then, Upshur not only provided books and after-school homework help for children, he also rented vans to take them on field trips.

He and other volunteers took students from one of North Philadelphia’s toughest neighborhoods to New York, to Washington, to Harrisburg, and to the Muhammad Ali Fighter’s Heaven Training Camp in Deer Lake, Pa.

“I wanted to take them to see the seats of power like Washington and Harrisburg so that they could understand where the people who were elected from their community were making decisions that affected them,” Upshur said Friday.

“To get a world view, these children have to leave their community. I have met kids who told me they were afraid to go out of town.”

In the last few years, Upshur has gotten funding to renovate the learning center. But he has been telling people the center needed a van for field trips.

On Thursday afternoon, Phillies executive vice president Dave Buck, the Phillie Phanatic, and others from the Phillies organization and Chevrolet dropped by the learning center to deliver a new 12-seat, 2023 Chevrolet Savannah van.

The Phillies called the learning center “a free safe haven for children that provides after-school and summer programming for children” in grades 5-12 and they called Upshur “a hometown hero.”

Upshur retired from his job as a counselor for teenagers at the Juvenile Justice Center about 18 months ago.

“It was a prayer answered,” Upshur said. “I’ve been talking to people to try to figure out how to make it happen.”

Upshur said he may have been noticed by the Phillies after the African American Chamber of Commerce for Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware presented its 2023 Chairman’s Award to Donna Allie, founder and president of Team Clean Inc., a commercial janitorial services company.

As winner of the award, Allie was then able to recommend that a local nonprofit receive a $5,000 donation, he said.

“I was there, but I didn’t know she was going to name us as the nonprofit prize winner,” Upshur said.

He said the Phillies also mentioned seeing a video of the Strawberry Mansion children on a field trip to Muhammad Ali’s training camp. Upshur said he was grateful to the Phillies, to Barlow Chevrolet, and to Allie and to others who have spread the word about the work that is being done in Strawberry Mansion.

Ed Barlow, vice president of the Chevrolet Barlow Automotive Group, drove the van, which arrived at the center with the Phanatic and Phillies 1993 National League champion players Milt Thompson and Mickey Morandini as passengers.

Upshur said he doesn’t think of himself as a hero at all. Nor does he think of himself as an important figure in the neighborhood.

“I’ve always been a kid who listened to my mom,” Upshur said. “ I’m just doing God’s work through my mom.”