Deputy County Administrator Bob Childress bids farewell

Royal Examiner paid a visit to retiring Deputy County Administrator Bob Childress on his final day on the job, Monday, August 31^st. Here Childress is pictured working his fingers to the bone right up until the end in his office at the Warren County Government Center.

Well, maybe not to the bone – we posed him for this photo after he graciously invited us into his office.

Like County Administrator Doug Stanley, who reached a Separation Agreement with the Board of Supervisors and left the county government just weeks prior to his long-time deputy’s departure, Childress stressed the positive relationship he has had with county staff over his year’s here. With Childress’s departure on the heels of Stanley’s, the County is losing a significant amount of institutional knowledge – about 35 years combined, more like 55 if you count Childress’s years at VDOT prior to coming here – from the top of its administrative hierarchy in a very short span of time.

And while our conversation was brief as he really did have some level of a final day’s responsibilities, including we imagine some fond farewells, we may have talked Childress into a future video retrospective on his time in Warren County handling a variety of administrative responsibilities from Sanitary Districts, road improvements, including competing for VDOT – for whom he previously worked – revenue sharing dollars, and oversight of the County’s Front Royal Airport.

Stay tuned for that next episode when and if it occurs – we failed to get a signed contractual commitment to a video from the close-to-the-vest deputy administrator as he ponders retirement and its options.

But until then, farewell to Deputy Warren County Administrator Robert Childress, whom this reporter remembers covering when he was making the monthly VDOT reports to the county supervisors. But that was just a couple years ago, right Bob ……