From Tobacco Fields to Blue Heaven

When Pam Herndon tells you that insurance is "the biggest waste of money…until you need it," you believe her. After 35 years in the industry and delivering needed funds into the hands of almost 100 grieving families, she's earned the right to that hard-won wisdom.

But what makes Pam different from every insurance agent you've ever met isn't just her candor—it's that she genuinely doesn't consider herself a salesperson at all.

"I don't sell a thing," she says. "I just uncover the risk that my customers have. Then I present solutions and leave it up to them."

This philosophy didn't come from a corporate training manual. It came from a lifetime of teaching—a career that began in tobacco fields, wound through junior high classrooms and school administration, climbed the corporate ladder at State Farm's national headquarters, and ultimately landed her right here in Chapel Hill, where she's been serving our community for over two decades.

Pam grew up in Durham when tobacco fields still stretched across the landscape. Her first job? Handing tobacco—work so grueling that the tar stained her fingers for months.

"That was the hardest I've ever worked in my life," she recalls. "I said then, I will go to college. It was my Scarlett O'Hara moment—I will never be this hungry again."

But those tobacco fields taught her more than just the value of education. Standing alongside older Black women at the wagon, sharing stories to pass the day, she learned something fundamental: people are the same, regardless of race or socioeconomic status. Everyone was working together toward a common goal.

That lesson would shape everything that followed.

Pam married her childhood sweetheart right out of high school, initially thinking she'd be fulfilled working as a bank teller and caring for her home. That honeymoon didn't last long. She enrolled at NC State, transferred to Meredith College, and completed her undergraduate degree in just three years while her husband worked two jobs to put her through school. She graduated magna cum laude.

When her husband joined the Air Force, they moved to Las Vegas, where Pam taught junior high home economics. She loved teaching but refused to raise her daughter in that environment. So she came back to North Carolina, eventually becoming a consultant for the NC Department of Education, working on high-risk behaviors and grant writing for thirteen school systems.

She earned her master's degree from East Carolina while working full-time with a two-year-old and seven-year-old at home—driving an hour and forty-five minutes each way before remote learning existed.

"When I graduated, I finally got to be a mother again," she says, "because they had no clue who I was."

When budget cuts eliminated her position at the Department of Education, Pam interviewed for an assistant principal position in Swansboro. She got the job—and made history as part of the first all-female principal-assistant principal team in North Carolina.

She walked in on her first day with a big smile, thinking this was what God had put her on earth to do. By the end of the day, after walking at least twenty miles (some of it running), she wasn't so sure. Three months in, she knew it wasn't.

"It was buses, bad books, and bad boys," she recalls. The politics bothered her most. When she busted kids for drugs or theft and called the police, she was told not to—the community couldn't know such things happened in schools.

State Farm had been recruiting her for five years. She finally called them back.

"The only thing I knew about insurance was how to write the check," Pam admits. She wasn't a salesperson and hated the title. But State Farm had told her only two things: don't steal their money, and be there for customers.

"So I said, I'm going to do it my way. I decided to continue being an educator."

She opened her first agency in Morehead City in March 1992. Those early days had a different flavor—customers would pay their premiums with bushels of clams, and Pam's freezer stayed full. (That kind of bartering would cost her license today, she notes with a laugh.)

Her educational approach worked. State Farm noticed. They recruited her into leadership, and she spent the next several years climbing the corporate ladder—moving to Greensboro, then to Westchester, Pennsylvania, where she managed the largest field office in the company: 59 agents with their teams.

Her husband counted the winters outside Philadelphia—six of them, cold enough that only Wawa coffee could get Pam out of bed. When State Farm wanted her to move to Bloomington, Illinois (even colder) as a stepping stone to becoming a state vice president, she and her husband made a decision.

"This ain't no dress rehearsal," she says. "Nobody else needs to be calling shots for where we want to live."

She told State Farm no. They asked where she wanted to go instead. Home, she said. Two weeks later, watching Carolina basketball with snow drifts up to the second-story windows, her husband wondered aloud if they might end up in Chapel Hill.

"Honey, you're not going to Chapel Hill," Pam told him. "That's Blue Heaven. Nobody's leaving."

Two weeks later, the call came: How about Chapel Hill? She and her husband were in the car that night, driving south to see the office on Franklin Street. She's been here ever since—first above what's now Tandoor Indian restaurant, then across from the Elmo's building, and for the past fifteen years, in her own building behind the Chamber of Commerce.

Ask Pam about moments when she knew she'd made a real difference, and the stories come quickly. There was a married couple who came in for a review on a Saturday. He mentioned he had life insurance through his work, so they didn't write a new policy. On Monday, the wife, Nancy, was waiting in the parking lot when Pam arrived. Her husband had left this life, just the day before.

Pam didn't make a penny from what happened next. She got Nancy in her car, drove to her late husband’s workplace, and walked her through HR to start the paperwork. That family has referred her more business than she can count—not because of any sale, but because she held Nancy's hand, a widow with two young children, in the scariest moment of her life.

Then there was the customer whose house caught fire on Christmas Day. Pam was sick in bed but answered the State Farm number anyway. She called that family at least once a day throughout their ordeal, guiding them through the process.

"I'm not bringing pound cakes to families in crisis," she says. "I'm bringing them money—so they can bury their loved ones, grieve longer than a week, and leave a legacy."

Pam lives by a simple principle: "To whom much is given, much is expected."

She's a member of 100 Women Who Give a Hoot, a quarterly gathering where each woman contributes $100 to support local nonprofits. She's an active Rotarian with East Chapel Hill Rotary, which runs the Teachers Supply Store—providing every Chapel Hill-Carrboro teacher with $75-100 in classroom supplies before school starts. The club also assembles 75-100 bicycles each Christmas for children in need.

She and her husband have participated in dental mission trips to Honduras and Nicaragua. And rather than spending her marketing budget on traditional advertising, she prefers to fund teachers' Amazon wishlists and support community initiatives directly.

She says with characteristic directness, "The better use of my money is supporting the community."

At 35 years in the business and counting, Pam has no intention of slowing down. She shared that she’s currently ranked 49th out of 19,000 State Farm agents nationally for investment services—a President's Club agent in the top 100.

"I always said, when I start sitting in the teacher's lounge complaining and only working for retirement, it's time to go," she says. "I have no intention of ever retiring."

Her team—which she still calls her "class"—includes four full-time employees in the office, remote workers in New York and South Carolina, and a bilingual "Director of First Impressions" named Ashland at the front desk. She challenges them daily, coaches them constantly, and takes genuine pride in watching them grow.

When one team member recently said after Pam's bout with the flu, "I'm so ready for Pam to be back in here, bossing us around," it was clearly meant as a compliment.

Pam wants Chapel Hill to understand something important: State Farm agents are independent contractors who own their own businesses. She owns her office, her furniture, her equipment—everything except the policyholders themselves. When you support her agency, you're supporting a local business owner, not a faceless corporation.

"When people say buy local, I'm as local as you can get," she says.

And if you've never heard from your insurance agent? That's a problem.

"I call that insurance malpractice," Pam says. "Your risk changes. If your agent hasn't reached out, you need a new agent."

Her practical advice? Take a picture of every room in your house, every collectable, every high-dollar item. Store it on the cloud. Pray you never need it—but if you do, you'll be grateful you have proof of ownership.

From tobacco fields to teaching to the top ranks of one of America's largest insurance companies, Pam Herndon has never stopped learning, never stopped teaching, and never stopped believing that her job is to help people understand the risks they face—and then let them make their own informed decisions.

She's been doing it her way for 35 years. And she's not planning to stop anytime soon.

"It ain't no dress rehearsal," she reminds us. "You just got to live life. And every day is a gift."

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Pam Herndon, State Farm Agent

Located behind the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce

Serving Chapel Hill since 2004

Chapel Hill Insider Sponsor