Karah-Leigh Hancock
If you have ever been to Submarina on Northside Drive, then you have probably met 26-year-old Matthew Harrell. Harell is the manager at the restaurant, but I met him on Twitter, the latest social networking site to take the Internet by storm.
While Harrell isn’t one of the celebrities with a million followers, such as Ashton Kutcher or Larry King, his “tweets” about his daily life made him the perfect candidate for me to share his story.
Harrell grew up in Adel and graduated from Cook High School.
He met his future wife, Amanda, in middle school and the two began dating their junior year of high school.
After high school, he attended Valdosta State University, where he first began majoring in physical education, but later changed to general studies.
At VSU, he was a member of The Wesley Foundation and Canterbury Club, both religious and spiritual organizations on campus. He was also active in intramural sports, playing softball.
He graduated in the summer of 2006 with a bachelor’s degree in general studies with emphasis in physical education, history and philosophy.
After college, Harrell married his high school sweetheart, Amanda, who had originally attended college at Berry College but transferred later to Valdosta State.
“Things have changed so much since I left college that what I thought would happen didn’t happen,” he said.
While working at Submarina wasn’t his exact plan, he loves his work, especially interacting with the customers.
“I really enjoy it,” Harrell said. “There’s a lot of neat people that come through. We have a lot of regulars. I joke with a few people, more than a handful, that I see them get out of their car and I start making their sandwich.”
While he doesn’t know where he’ll be in five years, he still wants to go back to his original plan — being an Episcopal priest.
“I know that’s something I’m going to do and that I’m called to do,” Harrell said. “It’s one of those things where you make your own plans and God says ‘not so much.’”
Currently, Harrell is very involved at Christ Episcopal Church, where he is the pitcher on the church’s softball team and attends Saturday night contemporary services.
“There’s about 16 of us,” he said. “People come and go as their schedule allows, but we usually have 13 or 14 (players) at a game.”
The Christ Episcopal Church softball team isn’t just a regular softball team.
“We’re in the C league,” Harrell said. “There’s two church leagues. There’s an upper church league, which is the B league, there’s a C league and then there is an A league, which is an industrial league.”
The team has no corporate sponsorship of any kind but held fund-raisers to help pay for the teams jerseys.
The leagues play at Freedom Park, and Harrell’s wife gets in on the softball action during the games.
“She loves it,” Harrell said. “She keeps score for us and keeps the umpire straight most of the time.”
Harrell began playing softball when he was 16 at Antioch United Methodist Church in Adel.
“They wanted to start a team and I was going there,” Harrell said. “I was probably as young as you could be to play, but I’ve been playing ever since.”
Harrell is also a huge college football fan. He credits Florida State Seminoles football coach Bobby Bowden as one of his sports idols.
“When I was a kid, I went to the Bobby Bowden Football Camp,” Harrell said. “I remember him talking to us, and it was really cool.”
Harrell recalls a scene from the movie, “We Are Marshall,” as one of the reasons he still looks up to Bowden.
“The scene in ‘We Are Marshall,’ where the coaches from Marshall go to West Virginia to watch films,” Harrell said. “Bowden was the coach there (West Virginia) at the time. I don’t know the accuracy of it, but I’d like to think it was accurate. Bowden let the Marshall team have free reign of the film room because they were having trouble getting their team together after that plane crash. That was pretty cool.”
He is also a huge Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Falcons fan.
“I tend to keep local with my sports teams.”
When Harrell is not playing softball or watching his favorite sports, he is into the latest in technology and the Internet.
“A friend of mine in college started a blog and it seemed like a cool idea,” Harrell said. “So I started one too, [but] that has been two blogs ago. I have a hard time keeping up with it.”
One thing he has kept up with is his Twitter account.
“It was one of those things that I kept hearing about on Facebook and in other online media, and I looked into it,” Harrell said.
Harrell feels that being on Twitter and blogging helps him feel connected with others.
“A lot of my friends moved away after college and I think I got into online stuff as a way to keep in touch,” Harrell said. “But once that got started, I just kept going.”
Harrell has also met people online.
“I’ve become friends with (people) exclusively online,” Harrell said. “There is a friend that I met via the Post Secret community that I consider one of my good friends,” he said. “(And) we’ve never actually ‘met’.”
He also keeps up with the celebrities online but not on his personal Twitter account, which he keeps for friends and family or people that he finds interesting.
“I have two separate accounts, and one is exclusively for following celebrities,” he said.
One of those celebrities is John Mayer, whose music Harrell enjoys.
“He’s one that I follow on my celebrity Twitter, but he tweets too much,” he said. “You’ll log on and the whole page will be (his tweets.)”
Harrell owns an iPhone, the latest craze in cell phones, where he loves checking his Facebook and Twitter account.
“I think my favorite thing about it is the versatility and you can do so many things,” Harrell said. “I mainly use it for Facebook, Twitter, things like that.”
The games are also a lot better on an iPhone.
“The games are a lot more detailed and the graphics are a lot better instead of playing something on the phone.”
Harrell currently resides in Valdosta with his wife, Amanda, who taught second grade at J.L. Lomax Elementary. This coming school year she is moving to Southeast Elementary, where she will teach fourth-grade math and science. They are members of St. Barnabas Episcopal where Harrell is a Sr. Warden.
While the couple have a dog, Kane, who is a boxer, they are expecting their first child together in January.
At some point Harrell says that he hopes to leave Valdosta. He would like to experience living somewhere else. However, he would love to come back to Valdosta later in life.
“As far as Valdosta and South Georgia as a whole, I like it here,” Harrell said. “It’s not too big, but it’s not too small.”
He also admires the history of Valdosta.
“I like that Doc Holiday is from here,” Harrell said. “I like that Barry Windham is from Homerville. I like that Valdosta is the winningest high school football team in the country. I like that my alma mater has won two national championships.”
Valdosta isn’t just about the achievements and celebrities that are from here for Harrell.
“Valdosta is the kind of place where you feel good about raising a family or retiring peacefully,” Harrell said. “I didn’t go to high school here. I’m from Adel, but I have made an emotional investment here. I did my growing up here. I’ve had hard times here and I’m coming out on the other side here.”
