Two stories about attorney Tonya Cammon’s career stand out like framed pictures against the backdrop of her three decades in the work force. One shows how radical changes are sometimes necessary; the other demonstrates the importance of looking back at the mountain peaks that reach above the cloud-covered terrain of life.
Cammon lets out a long sigh and provides some background material to set up her story about the day she decided to leave her first career. Although she developed an interest in the law in high school, she scored high in math and science, and wound up earning a postgraduate degree in medical technology.
The Mississippi native then spent nearly a decade working for a variety of hospitals. When doctors diagnosed her father with terminal leukemia, she moved home to spend time with him and took a job at a small community hospital.
Cammon saw a number of traumatic things at the treatment center, including the death of a high school senior in a car accident and the suffering of a 2-year-old burn victim. But a young man who died of a heart attack was the last straw.
“He was sitting with his wife and kids, and he grabbed my hand and would not let go. He kept saying, ‘Please don’t leave me. I’m going to die.’ And he did,” Cammon says.
Between that experience and her father’s death, Cammon decided she was through with the medical field and applied to law school. She continued to work in health care though, as she took classes at the University of Mississippi, where she was a Dean’s List scholar. Cammon completed her coursework in two years and three months.
“To get through school as quickly as I could, I worked from 11 p.m. on Friday to 7 a.m. on Monday, had a part-time job during the week, and took extra classes,” she says.
Upon graduating debt-free, Cammon clerked for the chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court, Armis Hawkins, for one year. While with Hawkins, she assisted on a project to develop a state court of appeals and, because there was no intermediate court between the trial courts and the Supreme Court, saw a variety of cases cross the judge’s desk. The experience helped Cammon to eliminate some options in the practice of law.
“I knew I didn’t want to do criminal, domestic, or tax cases, so I settled on medical malpractice defense work,” she says.
With the end of her clerkship approaching, Cammon looked for work in Chattanooga and landed a position at Grant, Konvalinka & Harrison. She says the racial and gender diversity of the firm’s directors appealed to her.
“At that time, the firm had 16 directors, four of which were female and one of which was African American. That was unique at the time,” she says.
In addition to medical mal-practice defense, Cammon practices in the areas of health care, employment and commercial transactions. She’s also trained in civil mediation and is an approved arbitrator for the regulatory arm of the National Association of Securities Dealers.
Since moving to Chatta-nooga in 1993, Cammon has been an active member of the legal community. She was elected to the board of the Chattanooga chapter of the Federal Bar Association in 2007 and is currently the president of the organization. As a member of the Tennessee Bar Association, Cammon in 1996 received its Young Lawyers Division Enterprise Award and was named a YLD Fellow in 1999. She was named chair of the TBA’s Public Education Committee in 2007 and 2008, and continues to serve on that commission.
Cammon is a former member of the Chattanooga Bar Association’s Board of Governors as well as a recipient of the President’s Award and the Albert L. Hodge Volunteer Award. As the chair of the CBA’s Law Related Education Committee, she worked for several years with area teachers and students to emphasize the importance of rule of law in society.
Cammon has also worked with organizations whose goal is to improve the economic status of women in Tennessee. A member of the Southeast Tennessee Lawyers Association for Women, Cammon has served on its board and as its president.
In addition, she has served as chair of the Southeast Tennessee Development District Advisory Council for Tennessee’s Economic Council on Women. And in 2009, Cammon was honored as one of Girls Inc.’s Unbought and Unbossed award recipients.
In other community related service, Cammon was appointed to the Chattanooga Human Rights and Human Relations Commission in 1996. She has served as chair of the board of directors of the AIM Center, which provides rehabilitation services for adults with mental illnesses, and served a four-year term as a member of the state advisory board for Project Citizen, a civics organization for middle school teachers. Currently, Cammon is a member of the Memorial Health Care System Foundation board of directors.
Cammon has also volunteered with the American Heart Association, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Foundation, Community Kitchen, Habitat for Humanity and the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera Guild.
While Cammon is clearly successful and hard working, her opinion about her choice to leave the medical field and work in law is less obvious. Is she glad she became a lawyer? Has she enjoyed being an attorney? She sighs again and pauses for several seconds before speaking carefully chosen words.
“It was the right choice for me at the time. And I have enjoyed being around many of the people with whom I work. There are lawyers at this firm who are as intelligent as anyone I’ve met, and I’ve learned a lot from them. I’m grateful for that,” she says.
“But as the incivility in society has spilled over into litigation, I have found that I don’t enjoy that part of it. You can be a strong advocate for your client without being unpleasant or getting personal,” Cammon says.
She also expresses dismay at the negative light in which some people cast attorneys, as she believes most lawyers are good people who want to help their clients, not greedy opportunists.
Cammon does feel good about the work she’s done, and has warm memories of a particular pro bono case.
“A company had insured an elderly woman’s house for a few years. On one occasion, she was a couple of days late with her payment. The company cashed her check, but when a tornado destroyed her house, it didn’t want to pay for the damage. So getting the company to meet its obligation was a source of great personal satisfaction, because that house was all she had,” Cammon says.
Cammon also enjoyed serving as an adjunct faculty member for the graduate program of the School of Business Administration at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She says if she ever decides to make another career change, she’d love to teach graduate level courses.
“It was rewarding and a lot of fun. They were wonderful people and serious students. Of course, every lawyers want to be a teacher or a writer,” she says, laughing.
There have been other mountain peaks in Cammon’s life, including her husband since 1997, Barry, and their shared love for dogs, baseball and classical music; her three stepchildren; her books; her deep affection for history; and her baby grand piano.
“I’m a classical pianist,” she says matter-of-factly, as though it should come as no surprise. “My mother was a skilled musician and made sure I took piano lessons. It’s a great escape,” she says.
Despite her straight-laced appearance and even keel demeanor, Cammon is full of surprises, not the least of which is her confession that she loves Dean Koontz novels.
“I love Shakespeare, but Koontz doesn’t require a lot of thought. I can read his novels quickly, and they keep me engaged. When I read his books, I realize my life is simple. No one is out to kill me,” she says, laughing again.
The laughs in a conversation with Cammon stand out like vivid blossoms against
a monochromatic backdrop, bursts of color that offset her dispassionate discussion of her work. They show how it’s impossible to look at a person from one angle and see all of his or her dimensions, and they demonstrate how there’s more to an individual than the things he or she does between arriving at and leaving work.