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Linda Kellum Receives TACA's Barrow Award

Order in court receives attention
By BLAIR DEDRICK ORTMANN
November 19, 2009
Posted: November 18, 2009, 8:57 PM CST Last updated: November 18, 2009, 9:01 PM CST

For 14 years, Linda Kellum's smile has greeted rushed attorneys and irate citizens, court reporters and clerks alike in the office of 88th District Judge Earl Stover III.

Her calm manner belies the phone calls she makes and answers, the scheduling she juggles and the files she goes over as she performs her duties as Stover's court coordinator.

"When people call and ask if I'm Judge Stover's secretary, I correct them," she said. "I'm a coordinator."

In addition to her job, she has taken the position further, becoming a leader in the Texas Association of Court Administrators by teaching other court coordinators, organizing conferences and meetings and serving on the organization's board for several years.

Her outstanding work earned her the Justice Charles W. Barrow Award this week from the association. The award, which is not given every year, recognizes someone who has "high standards of excellence" and who makes "extraordinary contributions in promoting court administration in Texas," according to the organization's Web site.

Kellum became a court coordinator when Stover was elected 88th District Judge in 1996.

"He'd never been a judge, and I'd never been a coordinator," Kellum said, laughing.

She and Stover graduated from Silsbee High School together, she said, and worked together when she worked at his father's title business and, later, law office.

In their respective new positions, they learned together, she said, calling his dad, longtime member of the law community Earl Stover Jr., for advice in a pinch.

Fourteen years later, the two have their routine down.

Stover, whose district also includes Tyler County, spends three weeks in his Hardin County office and one week per month in Tyler County, presiding over jury trials and civil cases.

Kellum makes sure he stays busy.

"I literally do over-book," she said. "So many of our trials don't happen and if you don't have something else already lined up, that's a day wasted in the courtroom."

Hardin County's courtrooms are shared by two district judges, the county judge and the justices of the peace, and some days, Kellum said, it's like playing musical courtrooms.

"We have court wherever we fit," she said. "We have started out a trial in one courtroom and then moved to another to accommodate someone else."

Kellum and Rita Peterson, the court coordinator for 356th District Judge Britt Plunk, share the duties of making sure everyone has a place to be.

"Every case that's heard in court, we have to set it," Peterson said, adding that Kellum is outstanding at her job as well as spending much of her spare time working for the state association.

"It's time they recognized her, that's what I'm saying," she said. "You almost have to be a psychologist to deal with the citizens who come in upset, and sometimes you have to be the chamber of commerce because everybody calls when they're lost or they need the answer to a question."

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