Being an only child didn’t keep the Jones County Superior Court Clerk from having fun.
She has only fond memories of her early years.
“My childhood was the best,” Pam Dixon exclaimed. “More because of the neighborhood. We lived on a dead-end road off Gray Hwy with lots of neighbors with kids. I was the additional child of other families.
“We were all over the neighborhood — sunup to sundown,” she recalled.
“And lots of us are still friends to this day.”
The former Pam DeLoach graduated in 1984 from Jones County High. While there, she would meet the guy who became her high school sweetheart and future husband, Buster Dixon.
They dated five years before marrying in 1988.
They have two children, Hunter, 33, and Holley, 30.
“Kind of a funny history story,” she related. “We were high school sweethearts and married. Both of our children married their high school sweethearts. Both of their in-laws are high school sweethearts. So that’s pretty odd. And we are all still married today.”
Dixon obtained her two-year Associate’s Degree from Georgia College, then got into the job market. She worked for a civil engineering firm for two years, with the IRS for a short time, then with the Bibb County Indigent Defense office for two years.
She joined the 3rd judicial district administrator’s office in 1991 and remained there until 2001, when her boss talked her into working as office manager at the Administrative Office of the Courts in Macon.
Dixon stayed there until the position was eliminated in 2012, then worked in the Secretary of State’s office in Macon until she went to work in the Jones County Superior Court Clerk’s Office in 2014 as an assistant to Bart Jackson, who retired in 2019.
While Dixon was working with the AOC, the Macon office closed in 2008 when the economy tanked. She worked from home and had to go to Atlanta once a week.
“Then they decided they really wanted me in Atlanta,” she recalled.
“It went from working at home four days, going there one, to flipping, and I was going there four days a week for about a year. It was downtown Atlanta, next to the capitol.” The commuting was no fun whatsoever, she lamented.
“I left at 5:30, and if I was five minutes late, I would be 30 minutes later getting to the office, so I was very conscious to be out the door by 5:25, get there at 7:30.” She would leave work around 4 p.m. and get home about 6. “It was pretty miserable.”
While at AOC, Dixon was responsible for counting cases that went through the Clerk’s Office. “We literally count all the cases. And when I started doing it, we did it by hand, went to every clerk’s office, shuffled through those big books, and looked to see how many were filed, how many were disposed, and how they were disposed, and how many had been left open. And that big count justifies the number of judgeships in each circuit.”
She was in the 3rd judicial district, and Jones County is in the 8th. Just before the case count started one year, the 8th district’s administrator left.
“The new one had no idea what was going on,” Dixon said. “So the other districts bordering the 8th district kind of took a county or two. I got Jones. I did his (Jackson’s) case count from then on to today, because now the clerks do it.”
Dixon said that she and Jackson developed a working relationship, and she lived in Jones County.
When Carol Smith decided to retire after 30 years in the office, Jackson approached her.
“He knew I was interested, and he knew that Ms. Carol was going to be retiring. We had many interviews, not just one. He may have had many more (persons to interview), but he and I talked many times before making the decision.”
Smith handled civil cases and most recently had been Chief Clerk.
That changed when she left.
“Bart did not have a chief until he decided to retire and asked if I was interested. So, then he named me chief. That was in 2019.”
Dixon officially took office as Superior Court Clerk June 1, 2019, and said the new job was somewhat more than she anticipated.
“It’s funny. Yes and no,” she said of her expectations. “I had no idea of the details and what all the clerk does working. I mean I just handled the civil stuff and helped with criminal a little bit, with real estate not so much, but this desk is a whole different ball game and I had no idea. But,” she added, “It has been fun learning, and it is very rewarding.”
Dixon acknowledged that one of the more discomforting aspects of her job even before she became clerk was what she learned.
“I realized on the civil side, I was seeing everybody that I knew if they were getting divorced, if they had any credit issues, any of that, I was the one they came to. And I didn’t like that.” She said she would see someone sitting in court, perhaps on the calendar. That, however, didn’t prompt her to look further.
“I don’t look for cases,” she stressed. “I don’t see somebody and think, ‘hmm, they’re in the courthouse. Why are they in here? Look them up.’
I don’t do any of that. I really don’t want to know.” Dixon went on to say she was concerned with what she termed ‘politics’ when she took the job.
“One of the dreaded things about the job was the state-level politics and learning how things can change for a clerk’s office quickly. You have to be on your toes, and you have to be paying attention. You really need to be friends with your politicians to talk with them and understand.” She added, though, “I am learning it, and it is making a little more sense to me as I dig and learn more and go to the capitol and meet people. They’re much nicer than I expected them to be.”
Dixon also pointed out that she does see the positive side of the community in her job.
“It’s pretty neat to see how the community does get together and does work together. I did not realize that before I got here, that our community really is caring and works well together to get things done.
“I feel like, whenever something happens tragic to somebody, everybody seems to pull together to share resources or give things to this family.”
One aspect of the clerk’s office that has seen change is the advent of e-filing.
“It’s a two-edged sword, I guess,” Dixon reasoned. “It’s much more convenient. It’s much more efficient, but people don’t walk in, so I’m not visiting with the local attorneys or attorneys at all or even their offices. You know, there’s only two or three people that come in on the real estate side still to do title searches. You can do it pretty much online.”
While she acknowledged that the number of court cases has not increased significantly during her tenure, Dixon declared there is a definite problem nonetheless.
“We need a new courthouse terribly. When we have a big trial, it is standing-room-only sometimes. We can’t do more than one jury at one time. There’s no restrooms upstairs. So when we do have a jury trial, all the jury has to come down here. It locks these bathrooms up, basically.”
“The judge walks the hallway to get to the small courtroom. We have a holding cell upstairs (for inmates), but it’s down the hall, and you walk down the hall amongst all the people. It’s not safe at all.It’s getting to the point, it’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when something bad happens.”
The clerk said there has been discussion concerning a new courthouse. “There is talk, but it’s in the very beginning stages,” she commented.
(County Administrator Jason Rizner said this past week that sufficient funds were included in the SPLOST approved in November to service a debt of $25 million. Tentative plans call for development of plans this year, with possible construction of an addition to the courthouse to begin late 2027.)
Dixon, who is in her second term and has run unopposed twice, has no immediate plans to leave her position.
“We have to do three terms to get clerk retirement, so definitely that,” she said. “But we’ll see how things are looking then.
“It’s been a good surprise and something I never in a million years would have thought that I would be doing,” she acknowledged. “I’ve always been a support person, so it’s been really weird getting used to. I really feel the responsibility more than anything else, that the responsibility lies on me for anything that goes on in the office.”
