PICKENS - LeJetteGatlin got the news she was hoping for last Friday when a CAT scan revealed that the cancer that had her at death's door just a few months ago is diminishing after chemotherapy treatments.
But, no, she told The Sentinel Monday, she will not be running for a third term as Pickens County Clerk of Court, a position she has held since being first elected in 2000 after 20 years as a court administrator under, first, John Griffin and later under Oliver Nealy.
"I actually made my decision before the test results," said Gatlin, whose withdrawal from the race leaves the future of the job to an election that now features at least four probable candidates. "I didn't want to be forced to go out, so now that I've got that good report, I'm going retire my own way.
"I just didn't want people to say I'm retiring because of my health," she said. "I said when I ran the first time that I'd serve two terms, and I'm really just fulfilling that promise. But I wanted to go out on my own terms."
Gatlin's husband, George, said the recent tests showed that the fluid on the nodules in both lungs had cleared up with the exception of one small area and that while the cancer in her liver had not shrunk, there were signs that it's beginning to die off.
"It's incredibly good news," he said. "It opens the door to additional treatments like radiation therapy and surgery. She wasn't a candidate for surgery as long as it was in the lungs, and she wasn't a candidate for radiation therapy with it in the liver."
George, who retired from DynaGraphics in Greenville three years ago, said that if LeJette had decided to run for a third term in office, "I would done whatever I could do to get her re-elected.
"But," he said, "I felt like she's put her time in and now it's time to enjoy the grandchildren and travel a bit without the encumbrances of the job. We're going to try and enjoy what we've worked 40 or 50 years for."
LeJette agreed that family was the overriding force driving her decision.
"I still feel like I've got a miracle," she said, "and that's why I'm going to retire now. I think the Lord answered my prayers, and now I can spend sometime at home with my husband and my grandkids, be a good wife, mother and grandmother.
"I've been working for 28 years," she said, "and my daughters want me to retire. They say I'm never at home, so I think I need to be now. It's hard to leave, but at least I know everybody's behind me and wants me to watch out for my health. That's what I'm going to do."
But, she says, in the roughly nine months she has remaining in office, there's some unfinished business she's going to be aggressively trying to finish.
"I'm still pushing the (county) administrator for a grand jury assembly room, and we're still working on security at the courthouse," she said. "And we've got to have storage space. The clerks in the office are all but sitting on top of each other. There's just no place to grow."
Prior to her announcement, four names - Ben Finley of Six Mile, Ben Mann and Pat Welborn of Pickens, and Jimmy Moore of Easley - had surfaced as possible candidates for the job. Filing for Clerk of Court and other offices begins on March 17 at noon and runs through March 31 at noon.
Gatlin said she isn't yet supporting any specific candidate.
"I've heard through the grapevine that I'm supporting all of them," she joked. "And I've heard that a new Clerk may make some personnel changes in the office. That would be a big mistake to let anybody go. I've been here 28 years, and this is the first time the office has a group that has worked together the way this one does."
Other offices up for grabs in June's primary and November's general election include four of six Pickens County Council seats - Pickens, Liberty, Easley and Dacusville - along with the Sheriff and Auditor, all four State House seats and Sen. Larry Martin's State Senate seat.
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