The elder Trawhons founded Jimmy's Paint & Body Shop back in 1948. By 1990 they were thinking about retirement, and since none of their four children was in the automotive industry, they decided to sell the shop. "It just so happened that I was in the process of changing jobs and stopped by to visit with my mom for a minute," Trawhon recalls. Spying some paperwork on a desk, "I asked what she was doing, and Mom said she was retiring and selling the business."
It was then Trawhon realized she was emotionally tied to the family venture. In the town of about 50,000 people, Jimmy's was a local landmark. "Just about everybody lived here their whole life and knew Jimmy's Paint & Body Shop," she says. "I just couldn't see them selling it to someone outside the family."
But at first her mom was reluctant to accept the offer because Trawhon had no experience in the collision repair business. "I agreed to manage the shop for one year, and if at the end of the year they felt comfortable with me managing it, they would sell it to me," she says. "If not, they could sell it to someone else." She bought the shop in 1991 and hasn't looked back since — though her siblings might regret not jumping on board with her.
The first few years, as she learned more about the collision repair business and began increasing traffic to the shop, Trawhon added on incrementally to the facility — 3,000 sq. ft. at a time — until finally deciding to move Jimmy's to a more bustling end of town five years ago. "It was ugly and dingy — really it was sad," she says about the old shop. "We had outgrown the facility. It was an old facility, and it was never designed to be a body shop. It was a tractor repair place originally."