Wayne Ellerbee was appointed to his first four-year term as Juvenile Court judge by Superior Court Judge Marcus Calhoun after the term of Henry Brice ended in 1970.

VALDOSTA — People entering Judge Wayne Ellerbee’s courtroom for the first time should be forewarned.

Ellerbee hands down decisions on juvenile court cases in a manner that has become legendary and for teens and children, infamous.

He is emotive, declaring his thoughts on a person’s behavior by raising his voice and sometimes even smacking a hand with great force down on his bench.

It’s an effort to make the light go on in a teen who has either stumbled or willingly headed down the wrong path.

During his tenure Ellerbee has heard thousands upon thousands of cases — traffic violations, drug infractions, sex crimes, family violence, even murder.

The number of cases and the years on the bench have not diminished the delivery of his decisions or his passion for changing the lives of the people who come before him.

Ellerbee’s name, along with his reputation as a person who tolerates no excuses, is enough of an explanation of what will happen if the law is broken.

Though my mother would often invoke Ellerbee’s name, usually as a joking threat, I did not meet Ellerbee until this interview.

Sitting in his courtroom for the first time, I observed Ellerbee handle a variety of cases, from shoplifting and traffic violations to a particularly heartbreaking case of family violence.

During each case Ellerbee addressed the parents and the child, forcing the ones being charged to stand accountable for their actions and answer his questions with respect.

Offenders were given ankle bracelets, driver’s licenses were taken away and, in one case, a teenager was sent to a juvenile facility until the age of 18.

For Ellerbee, each Thursday in the courtroom at Lowndes County Jail is business as usual, but things have changed since he was appointed to the position in 1970.

As Ellerbee nears his 40th year as a juvenile court judge, he spent some time in the courtroom where he changes lives, reflecting on how he got started and how the cases have changed.

Ellerbee began his career in law when finding a job grew difficult after graduating from Florida State University. He enrolled in law school at the University of Georgia and upon graduating got a job in Valdosta.

Ellerbee was appointed for his first four-year term by Superior Court Judge Marcus Calhoun after the term of Henry Brice had ended in 1970.

“I’ve been fortunate to be appointed each four years for what will soon be 40 years,” he said.

The position as the juvenile court judge is part time, as the population in the county does not qualify for a full-time judge. At this point, Ellerbee is more than a year into his current four-year term.

To be a juvenile judge, the person has to be a member of the State Bar of Georgia, he said.

He took the position because it offered the opportunity to be involved with the community.

“It’s certainly not because it makes you rich, like any judicial appointment,” Ellerbee said. “But I guess, like anything else, you like to see that maybe you can make some changes. Then after a while it just becomes a way of your life.”

Ellerbee believes he may be the third longest serving judge in the state of Georgia.

“After a while there is some enjoyment about having done this for some length of time,” he said. “We have to go to school every year to make sure that we stay current. The law is changing, not necessarily for the better, but it is changing.”

Working with parents and children is a worthwhile experience, he said.

“I get more gratification than I do anything else out of this endeavor,” Ellerbee said. “It’s always good for you when a parent tells you that their child has done well and always good when they tell you that you have had some positive impact on their future, and it’s always good when one will call you out of the clear blue and tell you they went to college and got a job and did well.”

Though Ellerbee has seen thousands of juveniles, some remorseful, some scared, some destined to be a part of the nation’s prison system for the rest of their lives, all the cases stand apart.

“Historically we’ve had some really bad cases I’d like to forget about, some murders and other things,” he said. “I think the thing that I would like to say at this point in time is that unless the community and the parents do something about it, violence is going to be the worst thing that we have ever encountered.”

The conduct of the juveniles who come before Ellerbee has changed, he said.

He doesn’t see as many cases involving property crimes anymore.

“Use to, stealing bicycles was the biggest thing I had and the most often thing that I heard and then stealing cars for a while. It just seems to run in cycles,” Ellerbee said. “Right now drugs and family violence are the worst things that we have, and they are the things we have the most of.”

The number of cases Ellerbee has seen with children lashing out, physically, against their parents has risen sharply in recent years. On the day I sat in on the some 12 cases Ellerbee presided over, two of them concerned juveniles being physically violent toward their mothers and siblings.

Ellerbee has a close connection to two of the nine violent deaths that occurred this year in Lowndes County.

“I knew both the perpetrators and both the victims because they had come through this court,” he said.

To Ellerbee’s consternation, these also seem to be things that are not going away, but getting worse in nature. Ellerbee believes the key to ending some of this behavior resides within accountability and responsibility.

In the courtroom, Ellerbee addresses both the parents and the juvenile with a firm authority.

“ (To) most of them (parents) I say, ‘If you’d done your job, you wouldn’t be here,’” Ellerbee said.

Gauging the attitudes of the parents gives him an insight into how the juvenile will respond, Ellerbee said.

“Most parents appreciate what I do,” Ellerbee said. “Some of them walk out of here mad but then you really know where the problem is.”

Ellerbee is well aware of his hard-line reputation.

“A lot of parents have said, ‘I threaten my kids with you every day,’” Ellerbee said.

For some it is a tactile threat and for others it is a reality, but for Ellerbee it comes with a degree of sadness.

“When I grew up the people that I feared the most were my mother, my father, the principal and God, in that order,” Ellerbee said. “Kids don’t have any fear of their parents, they don’t have no respect for their parents and its unfortunate that the fear of punishment is the only known deterrent for improper conduct.”

Once the behavior sinks into harder crimes, into street gang behavior, the only option becomes removing them from the community.

“It’s just amazing to me how in the span of 40 or 50 years we’ve let this happen,” he said. “I don’t think they’ve gotten worse. I think they’ve just been allowed to do things that they shouldn’t be allowed to do. Some of them don’t see a thing wrong with it.”

Separating them from what they took for granted, from being able to do what they want to do, hopefully alters the behavior, he said.

“Most of them don’t think they need their parents until they are where they can’t get a hold of them,” Ellerbee said.

With any case, Ellerbee’s first concern is what is best for the child and the options can be limited with the state struggling to make ends meet with a fiscally restrained budget.

“I have to resort to anything I can think of that stings, anything that hurts,” he said. “A lot of times I tell the parents to take everything out of their bedrooms, I make them take everything out except the mattress on the floor. Make them earn it, make them appreciate it, make them understand that life is a privilege.”

The schools could play a larger role in exercising authority, Ellerbee believes, but they do help in some ways.

“The schools, to some extent, are the only haven for a lot of these kids, the only place where they get a structured environment, where they are told what to do and are expected to do what they are told to do,” he said.

Ellerbee experiences the start of many of the juvenile cases in Division of Family and Children Services hearings, which he also makes decisions on.

“The deprivation cases, where you have the children born with the crack cocaine mommas, you have the children born with mommas that are 13 or 14 years old, the first person they see is a grandmother. They never know who there mother is,” Ellerbee said. “Those are the horrible cases and those are the cases that feed the system that brings the delinquents to court.”

If a person is not prepared to be a full-time parent, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, they have no business having a child, he said.

“And most of the kids I deal with should have never been born,” Ellerbee said. “Don’t none of them start off bad, but most of the ones I deal with do not have proper parenting. Be a proper parent, be a good parent. If you are not going to be one don’t have the children.”

Ellerbee is unsure if the success stories outweigh the repeat offenders.

“We have so many repeat offenders and I think part of it is because my ability to punish for certain things has been diminished so by the state and by the legislature,” Ellerbee said. “When I first started off I might could reach them if I could send them off for a year or for 90 days or for six months and they get shock treatment right up front.”

The type of crimes juveniles can be sent off for must be much worse than when Ellerbee began his judgeship. By decriminalizing punishment for a lot of conduct the juveniles have to do a lot more before Ellerbee can turn the light on, he said.

“Success stories initially are those that don’t come back. Real success stories are the one’s that make something of their lives,” Ellerbee said.

Finding a solution to the issues and putting it in action could take just as long to straighten the situation out as it has to get to this point, he said.

“You would have to start by first minimizing unwanted teenage pregnancies. That to me is critical,” Ellerbee said. “The thing about it is these little girls stand up here 14 years old and I’m taking the child away from them and grandmama wants them back and I won’t let them have them back and I say, ‘Well, who is the father?’ and they say, ‘I don’t know.’”

He asks them: When you child gets 15 or 16 years old and they start having sex, how do they know their child is not having sex with a half brother or sister?

“They look at you like your dumb, like you don’t know what you are talking about,” he said. “The problem is that regardless of whether they are black or white or Mexican or what have you, they are denigrating the quality of the individual.”

Originally from Columbus, Ellerbee came to Valdosta because he was offered a job in 1965, he said.

In addition to serving as a juvenile court judge, Ellerbee is a practicing lawyer handling professional negligence cases, malpractice suits and car accidents, he said.

In 1983, Ellerbee left the firm of Young, Young, Ellerbee and Clyatt and started his own practice. Both vocations are still satisfying for Ellerbee.

“If I didn’t like doing both of them, I wouldn’t do both of them, and the juvenile court gets in your blood,” he said. “There is a certain satisfaction of knowing whatever you do is designated to help.”

When he is not hearing court cases or representing clients, Ellerbee likes to travel.

His must have for travel is a camera, particularly a Nikon D80. Ellerbee’s foray in photography began on a whim one day when he purchased a used Richo 35mm and took a few pictures.

“Now I like the instant gratification of seeing what you shot with a digital camera,” he said. “I like anything outdoor with natural light.”

Ellerbee and his camera have traveled to Ireland and Alaska most recently but have also been to the Galapagos Islands, French Polynesia and Egypt. Locally he likes to go to the Butterfly Rainforest at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville to get close up shots.