Jared Soares | The Roanoke Times

Scarlet Ratcliffe.

What's the appeal of court clerk?

• See why Bubbie Fraley, Steve Hall, Diana Johnson, Yvette Pennington, Barbara Stafford and Dianne Rhody-Scott are running for clerk of circuit court in Giles County.

PEARISBURG -- Some joke that the contenders in the race for Giles County clerk of court come in more flavors than Baskin-Robbins has ice cream.

But the outgoing clerk, a woman who has served the office for a notable 42 years, surely is the flavor of the Old South.

Pralines 'n' Cream perhaps? Or Perfectly Peachy?

With her neatly coiffed hair and polished nails, the retiring constitutional officer looks every bit the belle of the Giles judiciary in a breezy floral dress.

She even has a perfectly Southern name -- Scarlet.

"Growing up, I didn't like my name," she said, explaining that her mother was swept away by "Gone With the Wind."

"My daddy's side of the family said it was a racy name. Now, I like it. People will call here today and say, 'I just love your name.' "

People also say they just love Scarlet Ratcliffe.

A random survey in the parking lot of the Pearisburg Wal-Mart attests to that.

"I love Scarlet," cooed Susie Sadler of Pembroke. "She was always helpful."

"I love Scarlet," echoed Melissa Guynn of Pearisburg. "She's a good lady."

Those in the legal profession have similar sentiments.

"You'll not hear me say a bad word about Scarlet Ratcliffe," said Christopher Tuck, a Blacksburg lawyer who said it was Ratcliffe who showed him the courthouse ropes when he was a young lawyer just beginning his practice in 1993.

Ratcliffe, he added, wasn't shy about critiquing his trial performance, either.

Tuck's take: "It's a rare thing that someone is willing to be honest with you and say, 'I think you messed up.' ... She knows more law than most attorneys do."

"You can always get a straight answer from Scarlet," agreed Christiansburg lawyer David Mullins. "I've known Scarlet since 1977, when I was an intern for the commonwealth's attorney. She was already working there and I think she was 12 years old then."

Ratcliffe, who is ultimately responsible for all the books, records, maps and papers in the county courthouse, keeps one record sealed: her birth certificate.

She's not telling how old she was then.

Or now.

"Any woman that'll tell her age will tell anything," she said.

Setting records

In the records room of the historic Giles County Courthouse, the mustiness of age clings to the green tile floor, the stark white walls and the tarnished metal vaults, filled with marriage licenses and divorce decrees, chancery causes and criminal warrants, birth certificates and land transfers. The labels on some of the crates read like a law library: Writs of Possession and Fieri Facias in Detinue.

Growing up in the little town of Rich Creek, Scarlet Buckland didn't dream of becoming one of Virginia's constitutional officers.

She graduated from Narrows High School in 1960 and selected one of the options available to girls of her time.

"I started West Virginia Business College in downtown Bluefield," she said. "There were about six of us girls from Narrows who commuted. All of us excelled in the business college. I think it goes back to the teachers we had at Narrows High."

After finishing college, she took a job with Giles County's largest employer, Celanese, despite her father's objection to her doing production work.

Ratcliffe lasted 14 months at the manufacturing plant. She then joined the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank and was the head bookkeeper 4 ¹₂ years later when O.G. Caldwell, then clerk of the circuit court, told her he had an opening at the courthouse and wanted to talk to her.

"He said one of his deputies was leaving and he would like me to have the job. This was Oct. 1, 1966," Ratcliffe recalled.

Although she knew nothing about the courthouse workings, she plunged in and toiled tirelessly. To her dismay, her first paycheck came with a mistake.

"It had an extra $25," she recalled. "I thought, 'Oh, no. You don't tell Mr. Caldwell he's made a mistake and you don't cash it for fear of dishonesty.' I carried the check for two or three days."

When Ratcliffe finally pointed out the oversight to Caldwell, he assured her there was no mistake.

He told her she had earned the extra money because the lawyers had praised her work without reservation, she said.

Her start in the Giles County Courthouse netted her $425 a month. Now, she earns an annual salary in excess of $86,000.

Ratcliffe became court clerk in 1991, after defeating Narrows Mayor Clayton Davis. She succeeded Ted Johnson Jr., who was clerk for 16 years after Caldwell retired. Her first year in office was also her first year of widowhood. Russell Ratcliffe, her husband of 10 years, died five months before the election.

It was Johnson who persuaded Ratcliffe to run in that first election.

"Teddy came to me and said, 'Scarlet, are you going to do the work and let someone else draw the salary?' That was pretty point-blank. I started campaigning rigorously."

She did not have to campaign so hard the second go-round. In 2000, she was the first clerk in Giles County to run unopposed for the office, one that usually draws a crowd of candidates vying for the considerable salary.

"It's a better-paying job than I ever thought I'd have," Ratcliffe admitted, noting that her salary following the 1991 election was about $30,000. The pay has gone up, she said, "as have the duties."

The number of duties identified for circuit court clerks in the Code of Virginia exceeds 800. Ratcliffe, however, sums her job up in a word: service.

"I am service-driven," she said. "The clerk is elected by the people, paid by the people and serves the people. I know that I just want everything at everybody's fingertips when they come in."

Ratcliffe said in the 42 years she has worked in the courthouse, she has taken only three weeks of vacation.

"After my husband passed away, my family advised me that I should not make this job my life," she said. "That's been hard to do."

No perfect score

As times have changed in keeping the courthouse records, Ratcliffe has changed, too.

Early on, issuing marriage licenses ate up her time.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Pearisburg was known as a "marriage mill."

"We had 2,000 marriages a year," Ratcliffe noted. "The Vietnam War was going on. You would get calls in the middle of the night to come do a marriage."

Giles County was the place young lovers from Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky came for expeditious nuptials.

The other states required a three-day waiting period before unions were approved by the governing bodies.

"Here, you could go to the hospital and get a blood test, be back in a couple of hours," Ratcliffe said.

When computers began replacing typewriters, Ratcliffe's job description changed, too.

In the summer of 1977, she and county treasurer Gerald Duncan designed a computer program for court records. It was a task, she said, that required 14-hour days without extra pay.

Now, Ratcliffe says, the hardest part of her job is just trying to stay caught up. When she started as a deputy clerk in 1966, it was a good month if she recorded 100 deeds. The courthouse currently averages about 3,000 deeds a month, she said.

State audit reports for the Giles County Court Clerk's office in recent years have been problematic. The 2007 report notes that "for the fourth consecutive audit, the clerk has not properly monitored and disbursed court liabilities." In 2006, Giles was one of only eight circuit courts to have audits with repeated findings, whereas 92 courts were audited without any internal control findings or compliance issues.

While the audits show that monies recorded and reported in Giles' financial management system were properly stated, they note that in some instances unclaimed property wasn't transmitted to the state in a timely fashion, that some funds were improperly classified in the court's automated accounting system and that some bonds had not been disbursed for closed cases.

Ratcliffe doesn't apologize for the mistakes.

"This happens in any clerk's office," she said. "There's no way you can run a clerk's office and not be written up. I've had a few perfect audits."

Pointing to the volume of work in the courthouse, staff changes and the fact that recent renovations on the old building meant that files and reports had to be stored in various locations, she said she was relieved that there were no serious problems.

Phillip Steele, Giles County Commonwealth's Attorney, said people in the legal profession praise the way Ratcliffe's office operates.

"I hear other attorneys talk about offices where the records aren't in good shape," he said. "Scarlet is very conscientious about her job and always has been. She wants to know what shape her docket's in, especially on the criminal side. She wants to know the status of every case."

Judges, too, laud Ratcliffe's proficiency.

A. Dow Owens, a retired 81-year-old judge who worked with Ratcliffe for many years, calls the clerk "the most efficient person."

"She always has everything ready to go," Owens noted. "You get the orders on the cases you've heard sometimes the same day. She's an excellent clerk. ... She's just an outstanding person."

What now?

Ratcliffe is the first to describe "a mysterious and confusing court system."

She hopes that hasn't been the case in her courthouse.

"I hope the voters have had a friend here," she said.

As the election for her successor looms -- Ratcliffe has endorsed her deputy, Diana Johnson -- the outgoing clerk is starting to think about the retired life.

Shopping, cooking, reading, sewing -- those things are waiting. She plans on getting dirty in the flower garden but she'll keep her nose clean in church. She's a longtime member and trustee of First Baptist Church of Rich Creek.

It was Rich Creek, her hometown, that she lost by 82 votes the first time she ran for court clerk.

She can laugh about that now.

"My brother said there's 82 liars in Rich Creek," she said. "You can't expect everyone to love you."

She won two elections. That's enough, she says.

"It's been a great job. But I think the time has come for me to go home and do what I want to when I want to as I want to."

Not that she won't miss it. After 42 years, Ratcliffe is sure she will miss the job -- and the people who go with it.

But don't expect her to cry when she leaves office. Crying just won't do.

"I'm so ugly when I cry," she said. "My makeup runs."