After 27 years, a voice familiar and calming to those who called in times of crisis is retiring.

Pam Strickland was greeted with hugs and well wishes as she brought her time with Liberty County 911 to a close earlier this month. From the minute she walked in the door and put on the headset, she said she never thought she’d be there for 27 years.

“I was glad, and I was glad I stayed,” she said. “I love it.”

Her health has necessitated her retirement.

“Right now, I don’t want to go,” she said. “But with my health, it’s time.”

Strickland recalled moving into 911’s new digs back in 2005. A Brunswick native, she grew up in Waycross. She also worked in Savannah, Richmond Hill and Darien. But as a single parent, she wanted to find something closer to home. So she found 911.

And Strickland acknowledges it takes a special kind of person to answer those calls in times of trouble for someone else.

“This is a job you’ve got to want to do,” she said. ‘It’s not a job where you can play around. This is serious. If you don’t want to do it, you’re not going to make it. Not everybody is cut out for it. You’ve got to want to do it.”

Strickland also said callers sometimes have the notion that the 911 dispatchers are responsible for how quickly emergency vehicles respond.

“A lot of people think we’re the ones driving the trucks,” she said. “All we do is dispatch.”

Strickland intends to keep her voice active — she’ll spend more time with her gospel group, The Mighty Gospel Force, which has been together for 10 years. She also plans to do some traveling.