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Longtime county attorney Jerry Willis announced his retirement at the end of the regular session of the Troup County Board of Commissioners work session on Tuesday morning.

“I stand here with somewhat mixed emotions. I want to announce that I am going to retire. This is my last meeting,” Willis said. “This is a great time for me to move on.”

Willis has served as the county’s lawyer for half a century. Before his announcement near the start of the work session, Willis was awarded the Platinum Richard English, Jr. Strongest Link Award of Excellence for 2024, an award given annually to the county employee who best serves Troup County and its citizens.

“I did not know that I was going to receive the award. It is especially meaningful to me at this particular time,” Willis said. “There’s a lot of history involving Jerry Willis and Richard English. I came on the board in 1973 and Richard English came on the board in 1974. We didn’t know one another. We served many years together and we grew to love one another.”

Willis was born in Cairo, Georgia, and came to LaGrange in 1968 after completing his clerkship with Federal Judge Griffin Bell.

“In 1973, I was called down to the old courthouse and told that I had been elected as the county attorney. It was a three-two vote. You don’t have much stability with a three-two vote. I came on board thinking that if I went five or six years, that would be good because that’s probably not too far off from the longevity of a county attorney in the history of Georgia politics,” Willis said. “All of a sudden, half a century and two more [years later], I have served as a great privilege this body for 52 years.”

Willis said things were very different when he came on board with the county. At the time, all five county commissioners were voted countywide.

“In the 60s, Troup County got ahead of the process. We didn’t wait until we got sued by the federal government that we needed to do our election more democratically,” Willis said. “That’s when Richard English was elected from his district and only the chairman would run countywide since 1973.”

Willis also praised the members of the board of commissioners, both past and present.

“The members of this body, you should take great pride in your election to this office,” Willis said, “You gentlemen are quick to be criticized and oftentimes slow to be praised, with very few exceptions the people that I’ve seen sitting in this in these chairs, occupy this position, do so, wanting to serve a public purpose, wanting to be a public servant for the people in this county. I don’t know that the people in the county really appreciate the fact that you step forward and are willing to accept the criticism, willing to move forward. That’s the one thing that I have learned more than anything else in these 52 years is that, by and large, with few exceptions, good people have come before you and sat in those seats.”