Sandhills assistant director earns Strom award

Herbert Nicholson said he’s used to making good grades in school.

So it didn’t come as much of a surprise to him when he earned the J.P. Strom Award from the S.C. Criminal Justice Academy — an honor given to the student with the highest cumulative point total during a nine-week class session.

Nicholson is employed by the S.C. Forestry Commission as the assistant director of Sandhills State Forest in Chesterfield County.

He received the award in August after completing a battery of tests at the academy to become law enforcement certified.

During his time at the academy, Nicholson said, he and a few other classmates monitored their class ranking and calculated their score after each of the nine weekly tests.

“There was me and two or three other people that were close to the top and we kind of figured out where we stood,” he said. “When they told me, I was like ‘Well, that’s cool, that’s a good deal.’”

He and two others from the Forestry Commission were among the 54 cadets enrolled in the course, Nicholson said.

“The three of us kind of studied together. We were suitemates,” he said. “I mean I, studied for two to three hours every evening. Really, it wasn’t luck. I did work for it.”

Now that he’s certified, Nicholson said he can use his newly-acquired knowledge to do his job more effectively. He’s been with working with the Forestry Commission for about four years and said it’s a job he truly loves.

“I grew up outside,” he said. “I’ve always been either fishing or hunting or walking in the woods. I love to be outside, even if it’s just sitting and reading a book or a magazine. I’d rather be outside than inside.”

At Sandhills, Nicholson spends his days focused on wildfire protection and helping land owners come up with management plans for their forests or timber lands.

Nicholson said he has to put his law enforcement skills to work to keep people from stealing — of all things — pine straw from the forest floor.

“We have a problem with pine straw thieves. I didn’t realize pine straw was so valuable,” he said. “We have a lot of long leaf pines up here.”

People apparently are taking the pine straw because they don’t want to purchase it from a home improvement store, Nicholson said.

“We can see where they’ve been, but its hard to catch them,”  he said. “We’ve got 46,000 acres up here.”

Nicholson is a McColl native and graduated from Marlboro County High School in 1999. He earned a degree in forest resource management from Clemson University in 2003.

He and his wife, Kristen, live in Hartsville.