BUDDY'S WAY: Firmly in charge at 92, Buddy Sherrill keeps his Catawba County furniture factories--and his collection of exotic cars humming just fine.

• Author: Perlmutt, David

Of the many things you can write about furniture manufacturer Buddy Sherrill, one is immediately clear: He's not an eager subject. Truth be told, he can get a touch cantankerous trying to avoid the spotlight, even with much to crow about.

It took months of weekly calls to arrange an hour-long interview. Afterward, Sherrill made himself unavailable for more questions and photographs, despite inviting a writer and photographer to Hickory for follow-up visits.

On one trip, he sent a message through his head marketer that "something had come up" and to reschedule. On a second visit, the journalists sat in his lobby for two hours before Sherrill appeared, somewhat miffed. "You boys can sit here all day, and I may see you. I may not," he said. Then he returned to his office, and the "boys" didn't wait to see if he would.

But what a story he has to tell: At 92, Harold Whittemore "Buddy" Sherrill, a venerated patriarch of North Carolina's once-storied furniture industry, still exerts a tight grip on Hickory-based Sherrill Furniture Co., which his father, O.T. (Oscar Truman), started in 1943. Buddy, who is called "Bear" by his oldest friends, has worked at the medium-to-high-end maker of custom-built upholstered furniture and casegoods for 68 years--since Harry Truman was president.

With the recent loss of factories making celebrated brands such as Henredon, Broyhill, Thomasville and Drexel, Sherrill has kept his company remarkably prosperous. His business employs more than 1,000 in five Hickory-area factories. While he won't share financial details, people familiar with the business estimate annual revenue approaches $200 million.

He's a holdover from an era of manufacturers who didn't seek acclaim and put little stock in collaborative leadership. "That generation once dominated our industry and built great companies by being the ultimate decision-makers for their companies," says Jerry Epperson, an analyst who authors the monthly Furnishings Digest newsletter. "Like Mr. Sherrill, they didn't need their names up on billboards."

Sherrill's old-school style included rejecting the shift to overseas manufacturing that slammed one of the state's most famous industries. N.C. furniture manufacturing employment peaked at nearly 90,000 in the early 2000s, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond report. It now totals fewer than 30,000.

Even during the 2007-09 recession, Sherrill kept his N.C. factories humming, though he was forced to trim some jobs and overhead. Profits have never recovered, and the company operates with 200 fewer people, he says. But he continues to seek niches, including a cushion-making unit that he says offers better quality than overseas competitors.

"We never went to China. We kept our factories, and we kept our employees," says son Whitt Sherrill, 57, who left the company in 2017 after 35 years. "The Henredon factory used to be in Morganton. Now, part of that factory is a parking lot for a Walmart. They left all their plants and made all their products in China. We stayed in North Carolina. We made sure we kept the craftsmen who know how to make quality furniture."

Andy Leeds, who ran a Sherrill Furniture division for 25 years, credits the company's success "to Buddy's tenacity at producing a quality product at a great price. His company could have been a lot bigger if he'd allowed it to be. But he wanted the control. Nothing gets by him, even at...