Dallas Cameron, 68, courts official

'He did the right thing,' judge recalls

Dallas A. Cameron Jr., a central figure in the North Carolina court system, was a dedicated and disciplined public servant, colleagues said Monday shortly after his death.

Cameron, former director of the Administrative Office of the Courts, died Monday morning after a bout with lung cancer. He was 68.

"He had a very high sense of honor in his duty," said Franklin Freeman, a top aide to Gov. Mike Easley and Cameron's friend.

"One of his great strengths ... was his questioning of things that forced me and others to think about an issue from all angles."

Cameron's interest in criminal justice took him in a few directions as a professional.

He began his career in justice in 1963 as a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where he conducted surveillance of Russian agents during the Cold War. He later served as special counsel and then executive secretary of the Judicial Standards Commission before going to the administrative office.

Freeman said Cameron, a native of Lake Waccamaw in Columbus County, never told him why he decided to pursue criminal justice. But some of the stories Freeman recalled about Cameron's youth show his poise and sense of adventure.

"When Dallas was young, he hunted alligators in Lake Waccamaw," Freeman said with a chuckle. "In the 1960s, he said, he was taking his daddy to the beach, and passed an alligator on the side of the road. He stopped on the side of the road, wrestled it, tied it up and took it to the beach as a gift for his nephew."

Cameron spent the bulk of his professional life as assistant director of the Administrative Office of the Courts, a position he held for 17 years.

He served alongside Freeman for most of that time. As assistant director, he also served as administrative assistant to the chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court.

As director, he helped put together the budget for the courts and presented it to the General Assembly. As a courts administrator, Freeman said, he helped get money to computerize courthouses around the state.

Cameron worked under Democratic and Republican chief justices, an achievement that shows his "compatibility" and the high esteem in which he is held by the state's top judges, Freeman said.

More than 25 years of Cameron's life was spent as a court official. He was a professional who always managed to inject a bit of wit into the workday, Freeman said.

"In whatever he did, his wit and humor would come out," Freeman said. "For the past 10 to 15 years we would get together with other judges and have supper together. He would tease them about telling the same tales every time we met."

Judge Douglas Albright, retired Superior Court judge in Guilford County, was part of the "supper group." Albright said he and others would likely remember Cameron for his strong ethics.

"No matter of whether it was popular or unpopular, he did the right thing," Albright said. "His gospel was simple: Do what's right."