Health Director Tommy Jarrell to retire

ROCKINGHAM — Tommy Jarrell, director of the Richmond County Health Department, will retire after a year of battling the COVID-19 pandemic locally while maintaining the department’s other functions.

Jarrell confirmed that he is retiring in a text Tuesday afternoon. The timeline for his departure is unclear.

Numerous Richmond County leaders have sung Jarrell’s praises throughout the pandemic for his guidance on safety measures for local governments and businesses, and providing consistent updates on case counts, trends, deaths, and the latest data. The Health Department has provided a COVID-19 Hotline to answer questions and partnering with FirstHealth to provide free testing and vaccines.

During a lull in the Board of Commissioners meeting Tuesday evening, Commissioner Don Bryant said of Jarrell that “I hate to see you leave.”

“I hate to leave in many ways. Richmond County has been great for me, the county commissioners, all the county managers I’ve worked for have been great to work with,” Jarrell said. “I appreciate the opportunity but I know your next person, whoever that might be, will do a great job. There’s a great staff there that can run the department when I’m not even there and that’s to have to keep things going. They’re dedicated employees that want to make Richmond County healthier and better to live in.”

Jarrell first publicly addressed COVID-19 on March 6, 2020 at the monthly meeting of the Richmond County Board of Education. The Daily Journal quoted Jarrell previewing the struggles that the community would face in the coming months:

“Sometimes I think those of us that are adults, and sometimes children feel this way, we feel like, we’ve got to be (at work or school) or ‘they can’t be without us,’” Jarrell said told the Board. “We need to stay away from work, children need to stay away from school when they’re sick or when we’ve got symptoms because we don’t need to spread that to other people.”

He added that, while at the time schools were able to continue with large events, “What’s going to bring it to a screeching halt is when you have a case come up in your community because once a case comes up you’re probably not going to have ‘a case’ — that case is going to become multiple cases,” Jarrell said.

This is a developing story.