Sharon Emilie Sorrels Lambert

Mrs. Sharon Emilie (Sorrels) Lambert, 83, passed away quietly on Thursday, April 2, at the Nursing Home of Yalobusha General Hospital in Water Valley, Mississippi, after a recent illness and hospital stay. There will be visitation and a remembrance gathering on Tuesday, April 7, from 9:30 – 11:00 a.m. at Waller Funeral Home.

The oldest of three children from a military family, Sharon grew up in Illinois, Texas, Oregon, and Japan. She was a devout Lutheran with an abiding love for the gospels and an even deeper passion for easing the suffering of others. Upon graduating from high school in Corvallis, Oregon, in 1960, she attended the Emanuel Hospital School of Nursing in Portland and obtained her RN certification in September, 1963. She immediately enlisted in the United States Army and shipped out to boot camp.

In later years, Sharon would occasionally laugh that her one military deployment was to Hawai’i, where she somehow toughed out that balmy island weather. By 1966, because of her inherently decisive nature and her penchant for administration, Sharon earned her Captain’s bars, which her father, retired Captain Aaron Sorrels Jr., pinned on her just after her 24th birthday. “Had I stayed in,” she remembered, “I would have gone to Vietnam.” That didn’t happen mostly because, near the end of her four years, she met an enlisted Airman who was about to get his military discharge, and, as she so often remembered, “we planned our whole life together.” Within a year, Captain Sharon Sorrels left the Army and moved to New Orleans to marry Kenneth Lambert, who became her husband of 54 years, and begin her civilian nursing career. They built a home on Curran Boulevard, where they lived when they welcomed their only child, a daughter, Connie, in 1968.

In 1976, the three of them moved to a quiet rural area just outside of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Throughout their 24 years on the coast, Sharon worked first for Hancock General Hospital and then South Mississippi Home Health, eventually becoming office manager of the Picayune office.

Sharon was a devoted Elvis Presley fan who owned many of his records and loved singing along to his songs. His bodyguards stepped in front of an attempt she and her girlfriends made to meet him while he was filming Paradise, Hawaiian Style during the summer of 1965. She was finally able to see him perform in Baton Rouge in 1977 and was even more awestruck that night when she became the lucky recipient of a scarf from around his neck.

In April, 2000, the Lamberts moved to Colorado, where Sharon was a supervisor at Brookside Inn, a nursing home in Castle Rock, where she continued caring for patients for another 17 years. In 2021, with her husband’s long struggle with Parkinson’s coming to its end, they returned to Mississippi, this time to Oxford, to be closer to their daughter.

Throughout her career, Sharon was fiercely committed to advocating for the care and comfort of her patients. She had a candid bedside manner, treating patients with her classic sassy humor and respect, always allowing them to maintain their dignity, and always focusing on what was best for them. She was headstrong and confident, never suffering opinions or second-guessing her decisions. She was born to be a nurse. When she retired in 2017 after 54 years, there were literally boxes and drawers in her office stuffed with heartfelt cards, letters, and notes from countless patients, family members, and coworkers she had cared for or worked with over the decades.

Her husband, Kenneth Lambert; her parents, retired Captain Aaron Sorrels Jr. and Dorothea (Mick) Sorrels; and her brother, Aaron Sorrels III, preceded her in death.

Survivors include Connie and her husband, Douglas, of Oxford; her sister, Linda Flenner, and her husband, Thomas, of Englewood, Colorado; her brother’s widow, Bernice Sorrels, of Portage, Michigan; two grandchildren, Emily Templin and her fiancé, Jordan Jones, of Madison, Wisconsin, and Valerie Richards and her husband, Nathan, of Richmond, Virginia; and several nieces and nephews.

Please make any expressions of sympathy or memorial contributions to the Kenneth Lambert Memorial Parkinson’s Research Endowment through the University of Mississippi Foundation, 406 University Avenue, Oxford, MS, 38655, or online at: https://umfoundation.com/main/make-a-gift