ROGERS — SELF PORTRAIT Date and place of birth:
March 1, 1959, in Calcutta, India
Occupation:
Bentonville-Rogers community president for Liberty Bank of Arkansas
My favorite subject in school was
history. Today, I’m interested in the Civil War and World War II.
My favorite restaurant is
Wesner’s Grill in Rogers.
The best advice I ever received was,
“Don’t let pride get in the way of good sense.”
The place I’d most like to visit is
India, my birthplace. That’s something I have as a goal.
I’d like to be better at
golf.
I normally wake up at
6 a.m.
My favorite movie is
Centennial, a miniseries based on the James Michener novel.
Something a lot of people don’t know about me is
that I was born in a foreign country.
One word to sum me up:
positive
Even when Joe Spivey leaves, he remains involved.
A lifelong Rogers resident, Spivey is the sort of man who often continues to work with organizations, long after he has officially departed them.
He left the University of Arkansas’ athletics department in 1998 for a job in banking, but he has remained with the department as the host of its Lettermen’s Club, providing hospitality to former Razorbacks before games.
He became an Eagle Scout in 1976, then remained involved with the Boy Scouts of America for decades.
It’s not that Spivey is incapable of saying no; it’s just that he always feels he can do a little bit more.
“He has more energy than anyone I’ve ever known,” says Spivey’s wife of more than 30 years, Suzanne Spivey. “Very seldom do I just see him sit down and relax. He just has an unbelievable amount of energy.”
She says her husband doesn’t have much free time, which makes sense given his involvement throughout Northwest Arkansas. He’s vice chairman of the Northwest Arkansas Community College board of trustees, as well as the chairman of the college’s land-use committee, a director for the Carroll County Electric Cooperative, and a Blue and Gold Officer for the U.S. Naval Academy.
His full-time job is the Bentonville-Rogers community president for Liberty Bank of Arkansas.
He volunteers his alleged free time for UA, Rogers Heritage High School, and seemingly any other group that he’s passionate about.
“I tell him all the time that he’s a junior Dick Trammel,” says NWACC President Becky Paneitz, referring to the wellknown, ubiquitous ambassador of the region. “He knows so many people, and he’s constantly out and about all the time. He really does have his finger on the pulse of Northwest Arkansas.”
Paneitz is not the only one to compare Spivey to Trammel; unprompted, Spivey’s boss, Howard Hamilton, makes the same connection.
Spivey is flattered bythe comparison, but in truth he’s not all that comfortable talking about himself. He’d much rather talk about his two children, or his late father, than his accomplishments in Northwest Arkansas.
But there’s no denying it: The guy is making a big impact. It goes back to something his dad, Rex Spivey, told him decades ago, when Rogers and Northwest Arkansas were just a fraction of their current size.
“My dad always said, ‘When you’re part of the community, be someone that is a giver, not a taker,’” Spivey says. “‘Help build the community that you live in.’”
A YOUNG LEADER
Spivey hasn’t been to his birthplace since he was a few months old.
He was born in 1959 in India, because his father was working there in oil exploration. A Siloam Springs native, Rex Spivey wanted to move back to the region, so before the year was out, the Spiveys had moved to Rogers.
In Rogers, Rex Spivey worked primarily as a Realtor, real-estate developer and cattle farmer. Joe, the oldest of his and Adeline Spivey’s six children, idolized his father, and was constantly at his dad’s side.
“He was a real gentleman, and somebody that I strive to be more like,”Spivey says. “He was someone that treated people with respect and with dignity. He always built people up. He was also a man of his word.”
Adeline Spivey was and remains today a devout Catholic, and the Spivey family has always been active in St. Vincent de Paul in Rogers. Joe Spivey attended the Catholic church’s school through eighth grade, and then spent his high school years at Subiaco Academy.
Spivey loved his time at Subiaco, and speaks glowingly of the Catholic prep school for boys near Clarksville. At different times, he has been president of its alumni association and on its board of trustees, and his son John-Rex graduated from there in 2009.
As a senior, Joe Spivey was student body president at Subiaco; he would later be student body vice-president at Arkansas State University at Jonesboro, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business in 1981. One of his former roommates at Subiaco, Dr. E.J. Chauvin of Rogers, remembers Spivey as an unusually mature young man, someone who even as a teenager didn’t act impulsively, and who wanted to make everyone and everything in his life better.
“Joe was just like he is now, the kind of guy that got everything done,” Chauvin says. “Even back then, he tried to motivate everybody he met.
“He’s always been the kind of guy you can call at a moment’s notice and he’ll drop whatever he’s doing for you. That’s not just for me, but for everybody.”
Spivey played football and tennis and ran track in high school, but what he really loved was boxing. He fought under the tutelage of Father Nicholas Fuhrmann, who taught the then-147 pound Spivey several life lessons, among them, “When you get knocked down to the canvas, you have to get back on your feet.”
The lesson stuck with Spivey all his life, and he has relied on it often. In 1984, he was a campaign staff member for U.S. Congressman Ed Bethune, who lost an election to David Pryor. Spivey found himself out of work and unsure of what to do next.
About eight years ago, Spivey left banking to take a job with a contract-packaging company, which he soon realized was a mistake. In both cases, Spivey dusted himself off and fought his way into professions that were right for him.
In the 1980s, that meant he went into education; in 2003, it meant returning to banking.
“When life’s throwing lefts and rights and pounding you, you need to stay in control, when you have a lot of pressure at work or with the family,” he says. “I look back and think those lessons have helped.”
KNOWN ALL OVER
Navigating Bourbon Street was no easy task.
Spivey was in New Orleans when Arkansas playedin the Sugar Bowl in January 2011. Chauvin accompanied Spivey when they were out and about in the city, and Chauvin was astonished by how many people stopped to warmly greet his longtime friend.
“As we walked down Bourbon Street, we couldn’t walk 20 feet without someone recognizing Joe,” Chauvin says. “It took us an hour and a half to walk a couple of blocks, because there were so many people from Arkansas who knew Joe.”
The people who stopped to say hi, Chauvin recalls, were from all over the state. There were friends, business associates, people connected to the university, and several former Razorback football players.
Spivey’s connection to UA dates back to shortly after Bethune lost the Senate election. In 1985, he enrolled at UA, working toward his master’s degree in adult education at night, and spending his days as a ninth-grade civics teacher at Oakdale and Elmwood junior high schools in Rogers. Spivey taught that course for a year, and then took a position with the UA’s Cooperative Education Department, developing internship programs around the country.
Among those Spivey worked with were student athletes. He was impressed bytheir competitive, disciplined nature, and so when a position in the athletic department opened up in 1991 - the same year Spivey completed his master’s degree - he jumped at it.
Spivey stayed at the athletic department until 1998, starting out as an academic counselor and then moving up to become the director of student life for student athletes. He helped them manage their busy schedules, which tended to include a full course load as well as a heavy workload of practices, training sessions and games.
“Athletes have very little free time because of the demands of their sports,” says Razorback Foundation executive director Harold Horton of Fayetteville. “That’s where Joe Spivey came in, because you have to use the free time you do have wisely. He always had a smile on his face, and you could trust him. He has a real care for other people.”
Leaving the UA athletic department wasn’t easy for Spivey. By then, though, he was a father of two, and he wanted to be around more for his kids.
So when a position opened in Rogers with Arvest Bank, Spivey took it.
“It was a bittersweet move for him,” Suzanne Spivey says. “He very much loved [working at UA], but he loves what he does now. So it was apositive thing, but it was difficult.”
At the time, Spivey had no experience as a banker, but his personal history told him it was an important position in the community. When he was growing up, he frequently accompanied his dad to meet bankers, and says what stood out for him was how well they treated him, and that they were people who were dialed into the community.
Spivey tries do that at his current position with Liberty Bank of Arkansas, where he has been since 2006. He’s “basically a community banker in the Rogers and Bentonville markets,” and says that what he loves most is helping people in his community obtain the financial backing to buy a house or start a new business.
In that way, he’s like the bankers in whose offices he sat decades ago. He’s also following his father’s long-ago advice and building his community.
“He’s very much a pleaser, and he wants to succeed, both from a personal standpoint and working for Liberty Bank,” says his boss, Hamilton. “He is extremely dedicated to doing a good job, and he’s unafraid to make changes.”
PASSION FOR EDUCATION
When Spivey was growing up, there was no community college near Rogers.
Northwest Arkansas Community College was founded in 1989, and Spivey has never taken a class there. Nor has he taught a class there.
Yet he’s extremely passionate about the school. He served on its foundation board and was appointed to the board of trustees by Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2005. (Ironically, Spivey was appointed to finish the term of Trammel, the man to whom he is often compared, after Trammel accepted a position on the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board.)
Spivey is now in his second term on the NWACC board of trustees. He’s also the chairman of its land-use committee, which means he has been instrumental in the planning of the college’s 83,000-square-foot Center for Health Professionals, scheduled to open before the end of the year.
The land-use committee is Spivey’s favorite part of his work with NWACC.
“It’s about building and the responsible use of the land, making sure we’re using it wisely for our community,” he says. “It’s up to us to make sure that we’re doing the absolute best we can for our stakeholders, people who live in the Bentonville and Rogers school districts who are paying our millage.”
Spivey, whose current term runs though 2014, takes his unpaid work withNWACC very seriously. On a recent day, he attended an employee breakfast, a kickoff for a spring forum and a new employee luncheon.
“Through both roles he has an overwhelming commitment to the mission of the college, and in particular to the needs of the students,” Paneitz says. “On the other hand, he’s a businessman, and he’s a very good judge of things like budgeting, planning and those sorts of things. His commitment to appreciating our employees and how they serve our students is very impressive.”
After John-Rex Spivey was appointed to the United States Naval Academy, Joe was asked to take a volunteer position as a Blue and Gold Officer, which means he assists in the admissions process. He interviews high school students and provides the Navy with written reports.
Learning the position took a week of training at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. As the son of a veteran and the father of another, he views it as a way of serving his country.
Which means it’s another case of Spivey using his time and efforts to better the place in which he lives.
“Joe’s very much a people person,” Suzanne Spivey says. “He really wants to help people achieve their dreams and goals.”
Northwest Profile, Pages 33 on 01/29/2012