Mounted on the purple wall in Edna Camp’s office is a painting of Lookout Mountain towering over the skyscrapers of downtown Chattanooga.
The chief deputy clerk at the Hamilton County Criminal Clerk’s Office doesn’t remember too many of the city’s taller buildings existing when she started work there in 1961. It was just a different scene altogether, she described.
“There was not the riverfront as it is now. Cherry Street consisted of restaurants. Sears and Roebuck was at the corner of Sixth and Market [streets],” remembers Camp, the county’s longest-serving employee.
As a 21-year-old “Kelly girl” – a nickname for those who found work through the temp agency Kelly Services Inc. – she began at the clerk’s office when Rudy Olgiati was Chattanooga’s mayor, Earl Buford Ellington was Tennessee’s governor and John F. Kennedy was the president of the United States.
She had a newborn daughter and was making about $250 a month.
“I told her to stay with it,” recalled Camp’s 90-year-old mother, Gladys McKee.
And stick with it she did – Camp is roughly seven months shy of her 50th anniversary as a county employee.
“It’s an enjoyable job. There are days when it’s stressful, don’t get me wrong. There are many days when it’s stressful,” she said. “In spite of all of that, [my co-workers and I] get along.”
Camp has a quaint personality, complete with Southern gentleness, and she’s quick to smile. She doesn’t like talking about her age, but says her tenure for the county speaks for itself.
For Camp’s family – five living generations from her mother to her great-granddaughter – working at the criminal clerk’s office is a family tradition that started with Camp.
“My grandmother was pregnant with my mom, my mom was pregnant with me, and then I was pregnant with my daughter, all while we worked here,” Camp’s granddaughter, 27-year-old Ashlee Hobbs, said from her desk, about 50 feet from her grandmother’s office.
Hobbs said her mom no longer works there. Her 18-month-old daughter frequently visits the office, but “only time will tell” if she carries on the family tradition.
A Chattanooga native and Tyner High School graduate whose childhood home made way for Hamilton Place mall, Camp was promoted to chief deputy clerk in 1977 by longtime clerk Leon Haley, who retired in 1993.
“There’s no other person in the office who’s more qualified to the extent that she is for the chief deputy clerk’s job,” Haley told the Chattanooga Times in 1977. “Mrs. Camp’s an excellent person for the position.”
She has carried that excellence into the 21st century, said Clerk Gwen Tidwell, which is why she’s tried to sway Camp’s decision on when to retire.
“She has talked about retiring several times, and I’ve managed to talk her out of it,” she said.
PDF: Edna Camp newspaper clippings
Camp said retirement is definitely on her mind and the funds are there for it, but “I just love what I do.”
And, she said, she wants to at least hit the 50-year benchmark in the criminal clerk’s office before making a decision.
“If I can make it to that,” she said, “then I’ll decide.”