Pam Melampy: Clerk candidate dies from aneurysm

It started as a really bad headache over the weekend. By Monday, January 16, Pam Collier Melampy was dead from an aneurysm, says her sister, Albemarle Circuit Court Clerk Debbie Collier Shipp.

Melampy went to see her parents on January 15. "Mom was having problems with her esophagus, and they went to the emergency room," says Shipp. While they were at Martha Jefferson Hospital, Melampy's mother urged her daughter to seek treatment for the headache.

After a CAT scan and an MRI at Martha Jefferson, Melampy, who had turned 50 on December 24, was transferred to UVA Medical Center, according to her sister. "She sat up in bed and said, 'There's something really wrong with my head,'" says Shipp.

Melampy was a deputy clerk working for her sister in the county. In 2011, she ran unsuccessfully for the Charlottesville Circuit Court clerk job, first in the Democratic primary and then as an independent.

For Debbie Shipp, her sister's death marks a year of unbearable loss. On January 23, 2011, Shipp's 21-year-old son David died in an automobile accident. "It was exactly one week before the one-year anniversary," says Shipp of her sister's January 16 death.

Pam Melampy had organized a blood drive for January 23 in memory of David Shipp Jr. "She was getting ready for that on Monday," says Shipp.

Instead, the family will mourn another loss when Melampy is buried January 21.