combining two columns into one without vstack or an array

i have two columns of names on two separate sheets of a workbook. on a third sheet, i want to combine all of the (unique, but that part is easy) names into one column. from there, some vlookups nested in iferrors pull in additional from whichever sheet the name came from (looks for the name in the larger spreadsheet; if it's there, do the vlookup, but if there's an error, check the smaller sheet and do the vlookup).

vstack does this nicely, but because it returns an array, i can't use basic sorting anymore. the sort function exists, but we want to be able to do different sorts at different times and this sheet is for use by my less tech savvy coworkers, so i can't rely on that. a recommendation of =query1 & query2 was attempted but i ended up with the first row of each spreadsheet in one cell.

please let me know if anyone else has ideas! i've been googling but keep hitting walls :')