In the wave of retirements that occur at the beginning of a new year, the retirement of Teri Fox as administrative secretary at the Wood County Sheriff’s Department stands out as she is closing out 38 years on the job.

A come-and-go retirement reception is planned for her at the Wood County Justice Center on Friday, Dec. 9 from 2-4 p.m. Fox is not a person who calls attention to herself; some people who aren’t intimately involved with the sheriff’s office or who don’t know her from where she grew up may not even know her name. But she has been an integral part of the department going back six sheriffs spanning more than three decades.

She laughs when asked what she does. “Everything,” she replies. She receives all incoming civil papers, logs them into the computer and gets them ready and gives them to the department’s civil deputy. She does the warrants, puts them in and gets them ready for the dispatchers and to be placed in the computer information system. If the sheriff needs a letter typed, she does that, and “the guys, if they need a copy of something or have a question, they all end up coming here. I’m here to help them out.

“If they need something from `back in the day’ as we call it up here, they’ll come in here.” Even during her interview, the page on her phone beeped repeatedly, she had to take one call and one deputy popped his head in to briefly discuss a matter.

Her office reflects her role in the operation of the department. Volumes of logs, including an old jail log, as well as file-filled crates and office equipment are here and there - it is a place of business, not for show. There is some law enforcement art, including a sketch by the late Everett Nix, but also framed and faded photos of the sheriff’s office building and “the old crews.”

Fox began at the sheriff’s department after she graduated from Alba-Golden High School in 1977 as part of the old CETA grant program that provides a part-time placement for someone. If the working relationship was successful at the end of six months the person might be offered a permanent job. It looks like it worked out in Fox’s case. In fact, the day she was applying, she recalls being in the office filling out paperwork and former Sheriff Bill Edd Jones walked in. They introduced themselves and he asked what she was doing. He hired her there on that day and asked her to start the following day, which she did. That was July 4, 1977.

In January 1978 when a position as a dispatcher opened up, she was offered and accepted the job. A few years later Jones’ secretary retired and Fox moved into the position and is retiring as administrative secretary.

When folks who knew Jones recall him, a certain fondness can be detected in their voice or they smile as they say his name. He was the sheriff who hired Fox, and she felt the same as other folks did about him. She described him as “a real easygoing, quiet guy.”

During the years Fox has worked for six different sheriffs. She made her intention to retire known quite a while ago and intends to train the new person. However, no one has been hired yet so she has extended her date to leave to the end of January so she can train the person the incoming sheriff will hire. That will actually make seven sheriffs. Sheriffs she has worked for have been Jones, Frank White, Bill Skinner, Dwaine Daugherty, Bill Wansley and Sheriff Jim Brown.

She said, more than once, “They were all good sheriffs. They were all different in many ways and the same in many ways.” The first few were two- or three-term sheriffs and then the latter few have served single terms. The transitions are a difficult time for people in the department, she noted. “You get to the point where you don’t like politics,” she said.

“I never put a sign in my yard. Uh uh, never. You just go with the flow,” she said. Fortunately, nearly all of the sheriffs who came in to office were people she either knew of or was familiar with because of their exposure to the sheriff’s office or role in the community. She recalled that Frank White was “a good administrator and he was easy to work for” and that Bill Skinner was popular with the staff because about 2 p.m. on Fridays he would ask them if they were through with their work, and if they were, he’d let them go home.

In addition to changes in sheriffs, Fox has seen changes from the uniforms, to the number of calls taken, to the implementation of computers. She liked to gather round and hear stories that were told when she was new to the department. Now, she is the one telling the stories to the “new generation.”

“When you start in the 70s, a lot of the laws have changed, in the way we’re able to treat people, back then it was kind of lax, now it’s not.” When Jones and White were in office, she recalls them hiring more older men as deputies and now she sees many younger people filling the positions.

“I remember those days everyone used to carry revolvers. Now everybody carries automatics.”

She is glad to be able to be part of the era of the 70s. “We just had a lot of fun sitting round talking and listening to the old stories,” she said.

The younger officers have seemed incredulous about the department not having computers. When she started, the department didn’t even have a teletype machine. Winnsboro Police Department did so they would call them and ask them to run important dispatches. And, “Back then, when someone needed a 28 (the law enforcement 10 Code for vehicle ownership), we would pull out this big ‘ole huge book that the tax office gave us and look up the license plate number and read who it belonged to here in the county.” She said the department didn’t start getting computers until probably in the 1980s.

There are a few more women working in the field, but the proportion of minorities has always been low. As far as morale, Fox said that the pride in working for the sheriff’s department has always been there and still is. The department has grown, which has led to an increase in the number of people in the office to support them.

Fox admits that she’s going to miss the people and the camaraderie she feels at the department, but she also said she is retiring now because “it’s time.” She said others had told her that when it was time, she would know. Now she does. She is building a house and expects that will consume a great deal of her time. And, she also expects that she’ll be answering telephone calls from her successor, as well as paying visits back to her old co-workers.