Neighbors you should know:
Continuing Guthrie News Leader’s “Neighbors You Should Know” series, we talk to Jason Reece, owner of Reece Appliance Repair and the OJPM Chaplain for the Logan County Detention Center.
The first thing that Jason Reece would like for people to know about his life is: “It’s never too late to turn your life around.”
Reece has been in business for himself since 2009. His customers think of him as family, and he is always among the first to be recommended whenever anyone is looking to get an appliance repaired or maybe buy a refurbished used appliance. He’s understood to be trustworthy, reliable, friendly and professional.
It’s hard to believe that he ever had any trouble in his past, but he’ll be the first one to tell you about the struggles in life he once had.
Creating Reece Appliance Repair was a journey of hard work, long hours and multiple jobs. Working in furniture, he learned he wanted to fix appliances, so he began doing that while he was still working fulltime. When the store closed, he had to get two other jobs. He helped his brother-in-law during the day picking up trash, and he got a job at a car wash. Working those two jobs, plus repairing appliances, resulted in very long days. Eventually, he was able to quit the other two jobs and focus on appliance repair full-time.
Part of what grew Reece’s appliance repair business has been the way he treats each customer with kindness and care.
“My goal when I go into a house, and I’ve never met that person, I like to build relationships. Whether I’m there for 10 minutes or an hour, when I leave that house and I get that job done, I want them to feel like they’ve known me for a long, long time,” Reece explained.
“Now, some people don’t want to talk, and they just want you to do the job, but most people will talk to you a little bit. I love hearing people’s stories. When I’m in somebody’s house, if we hit it off good enough, especially if I go back a second or third time, I love hearing how they got from Oklahoma to Fort Smith, Ark., you know what I mean? I love people, and I like loving on people.”
Reece said his goal at the end of each day is to know that he treated everyone with integrity.
“I try to do people right,” he said. “If I do a service call in town, and I go two miles away to an 80-year-old lady who’s just lost her husband, and all I do is unplug and plug something back in, that’s a special situation. She doesn’t owe me anything. You know? Each house is different.”
In May of 2015, a very different Jason Reece was going through a divorce, was arrested, and was sitting in the Logan County Detention Center for two months when something incredible happened to him.
“Even up until the first week or two I was in jail, I didn’t know if I necessarily had a problem. Nobody was happy with me,” Reece recalled. “They made me trustee, and I was outside. It was June 12th of 2015, a day before my 38th birthday, early in the morning, like the sun just came up at 6 o’clock in the morning and I’m outside sweeping the stairs.
“I heard a car about to drive by, and I saw it was (wife) Marsha’s. So I kinda acted like I didn’t see it, you know what I mean? I think, you know what? I know she’s mad at me, so I’m just gonna keep doing my job. Well, as they kept approaching me, I could hear that motor kind of hum down a little bit, and I knew they were slowing down. I looked back up when they were about perpendicular from me and my two youngest boys -- one of them was in the passenger seat in the back seat and one of them was in the passenger seat in the driver seat -- rolled their windows down.
“I’ll never forget that chill inside thinking, man, I am these kids’ Superman, and they see me outside in orange; but they didn’t look at me like that. Not like ‘You haven’t been around. You’ve been drinking a lot.’ You know what they looked at me like? ‘You’re our dad, and we love you no matter what,’ and I’ll never forget that. That moment changed everything. That moment changed my life.
“Ryan was 9, and Bryson was 4. When they kept going and got out of sight, I was just crying and waving. I think I probably had a little bit of an emotional breakdown, if you will. Outside those stairs inside that jail, there’s a little bathroom right there. When they got out of sight, I went right in, threw my broom down, and went into that bathroom, and locked that door. I hit my knees, and I cried out like I had never cried for anything in my life to God.”
“That was my first spiritual experience of my life because I knew at that very moment: You know what? Even if I’m not a husband, even if Marsha and I live 15 miles apart, I’m going to do the very best I can. Until I show my kids that they’re my absolute world. And I did. I think I forgave myself that morning inside that bathroom. I knew that no matter what, even if Marsha and I weren’t together, that I was going to be okay. You know those little hairs you get on the back of your neck, or the little chills? That experience was kinda like that, but multiply that by five million.
“Internally, I had peace inside my life. I was broke, spiritually broke, physically broke, mentally broke. I had no money. I had maxed out five credit cards. My life was unmanageable, but I knew that, no matter what, if I kept God first, and I did the very best I could each day, not tomorrow, not yesterday, but each day, that everything would be okay. And thank God it has been. There is hope, and hope has a name. That name is Jesus Christ, our Lord, because if you put him first in your life, I don’t care what you’re doing. Things can change.”
As Reece has moved forward with his business, his hope and love has spilled over into how he treats his customers and their families. “I try to treat people with respect -- the way I’d like to be treated.” said Reece.