Jamie Sorrells is the kind of guy who sets and reaches goals — climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, for example — but being named Russellville Citizen of the Year wasn’t on his list.
He achieved the honor anyway.
“Holy moly,” Sorrells said. He joked that he considered asking for a recount.
The Russellville Area Chamber of Commerce was quite clear that it intended to name him.
Sorrells, co-owner and president of Sorrells Body Shop in Russellville, received his award in January from last year’s winner, Dr. Finley Turner, a retired physician.
“He’s a distinguished gentleman in our town; it meant a lot to me that he introduced me at the banquet,” Sorrells said.
Turner called Sorrells a man of great compassion and strength of character.
The Citizen of the Year 2016 honor was a surprise for Sorrells, who said he attended the banquet because he was told that one of his employees was winning an award, which was just a ruse.
Sorrells’ father, Raymond, grew up in Russellville and started the body shop in 1971 in an abandoned two-bay gas station. Although Sorrells is the majority owner of the business, he has worked in the oil-and-gas field since 1981.
Sorrells said he’s a division land man for XTO, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil.
“I tell people I work for one of the biggest companies in the world, and I own one of the smallest,” he said. “I’ve been through a lot of ups and downs in the industry; the big Fayetteville Shale deal — it’s kind of slowed down now.”
Sorrells said he oversees an oil field in Oklahoma.
“I have to run over there quite often,” he said, adding that he’s gone a couple of days a week.
Sorrells’ parents moved away from Russellville for a while but moved back when he was 13. He has three brothers — Steve, Randy and Jeff — and he is the only one who didn’t work at the family body shop while he was growing up. He said his brother Steve ran the business with their father.
“They’re the ones who built it up, built its great reputation,” Jamie Sorrells said.
Sorrells went to Arkansas Tech University in Russellville, where he majored in business and played football.
“When I first got out of college, I drove a dump truck. That was back in the day when you didn’t go back home when you got out of school,” he said.
When his father decided to retire and Steve found other interests, Sorrells bought the body shop in 1989.
Except for about 1 1/2 years when he lived in Oklahoma and Texas, he has been in Russellville, he said.
“I’m out dealing with landowners a lot, so I’m not tied to the office,” he said. “I love this community; it’s my hometown.”
Sorrells said he has been blessed to have a good job in the oil-and-gas industry, so he doesn’t have to rely on Sorrells Body Shop to survive. He said he uses Sorrells Body Shop as a resource to give back to the community.
“Education is very important to me; it’s the foundation to people’s success,” Sorrells said. “At the end of the year, Russellville has what they call a Community Scholarship Program. It’s a program run through Russellville High School, and they reach out to community members to fund scholarships for graduating seniors.” He said Sorrells Body Shop provides money for scholarships every year.
The business refurbished a handicapped-accessible van and donated it in 2013 to The Russ Buss, a nonprofit organization that helps the homeless.
“There again, it’s one of those situations — we’ve been very blessed to be in this town,” he said.”The town’s supported our business for 45 years, so I try to give back as much as I can. The Bible says we’re supposed to help others in need.”
Sorrells said that at a quarterly meeting with employees, the name of an employee is drawn from a hat, and the company donates $500 in the name of the employee to the charity of his choice.
Also, employees do a toy drive at Christmas and a cereal drive in the summer.
“I give all the credit and all the successes we’ve had for such a long run here in Russellville to my employees; some have been here over 20 years. I just have really good quality employees,” he said.
Sorrells said his business partner, co-owner and vice president, Eric Hartzell, manages the day-to-day operations of the body shop.
Hartzell said he has been in business with Sorrells since 1999.
He echoed what Sorrells said about the business being a vehicle to help others.
“He just does it to give a job to 17, 18 people,” Hartzell said.
In addition to the community outreach Sorrells does, “he does a lot of stuff people don’t even know about,” Hartzell said.
Sorrells also gives credit for his success to his wife, Beth, “the sweetest person I know,” he said, and his grown children and sons-in-law. His daughter Vandy Moore, a first-grade teacher in Dardanelle, is married to Keith, who works for Sorrells Body Shop, and they have three grown children. Sorrells’ daughter Melanie Cooke, who works for Counseling Associates, is married to David, who manages Stoby’s Restaurant in Russellville. Sorrells’ son, Jackson, is a senior at Arkansas Tech.
Sorrells served for eight years on the Russellville School Board and is a deacon at the West Side Church of Christ, where he has participated in ministries and mission trips to Guatemala and Mexico.
He said one of the highlights of his life was climbing Kilimanjaro in September 2016.
“I’m kind of a goal-oriented person,” he said. Sorrells said a friend suggested that they climb Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa, and that prompted him to lose 65 pounds.
Sorrells, his daughter Melanie and the friend climbed the mountain.
“It was one of the highlights of my life,” Sorrells said. It took seven days to go up the mountain. “We had porters that carried our gear, and we camped along the way,” he said. The point of going slowly was to get acclimated to the altitude.
They left at midnight the last night. “We climbed all night long; we had to have headlamps — it was bone cold,” he said.
They got to the rim of the volcano’s crater just about sunrise. Then it was another 1 1/2 hours to get to the peak — 19,300 feet in the air, which made it hard to breathe, he said.
“You look around a little bit and say, ‘We’d better go,’” Sorrells said with a laugh.
He’s also participated in a triathlon and other races.
This year, his goal is a little more grounded. He plans to build a body shop on Main Street. The current business on Arkansas Avenue is in a former automobile dealership and has wasted space, he said.
The new facility will be about 25,000-plus square feet, tailor-made to the needs of the body shop.
“This year, my goal is I’ve got to get this building built,” he said.
He said the Russellville Area Chamber of Commerce Award was something he’d never thought about achieving.
“Awards like this — they’re very gracious in giving this to me, and I’m humbled, quite honestly — but there are a lot of people who do a lot for our community. I really don’t feel deserving of it. I do things not to get accolades out of it,” he said, “although sometimes the public notices.
“It doesn’t matter what you have; you just do the best with what you have. You try to help others along the way. There’s always going to be people out there in need and people who need a helping hand.
“I just kind of try to help people that I see. It’s just about giving back. I want to give back to the community because this community has blessed me and my family,” he said. “You just want to make a difference in somebody’s life.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.