The Emporia Gazette

May 27, 2012

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Magistrate Judge John Conklin was having the equivalent of buyer’s remorse Thursday morning as he prepared to attend a reception in his honor at the Lyon County Courthouse.

Outside Chief Clerk of the Court Chris Brammer’s office, Conklin and his wife Lois waited as court employees bustled past to finish setting up refreshments and put on the last-minute touches for the party that would mark his retirement.

Was he getting eager to leave his duties behind and relax?

“You should have asked me that a week ago,” he said, with a tinge of reluctance in his voice.

“It’s been good. I’ve had, you might say, a wonderful career.”

His life’s work has centered on enforcing laws — first as a deputy and undersheriff, briefly as a police officer, then long-term as a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper. Following his retirement from KHP, he became the Fifth District’s first security officer at the Lyon County Courthouse and, 12 years ago, was chosen to replace then-magistrate judge Francis Towle.

Conklin’s career as a peace officer began almost casually in 1964, when he and his wife went to Paola to visit his family. A high-school friend mentioned that he might be able to get on as a deputy there. He visited with the Miami County sheriff that weekend and on Monday, he reported to work.

“He swore me in at noon, gave me the keys to a patrol car, and I didn’t know how to (operate) it,” he said, laughing at his lack of knowledge of the equipment and the absence of training that now is required to become a Kansas law enforcement officer.

And he needed to acquire what amounted to a new language — the “10 codes” that officers used to communicate situations and the jargon that passed between dispatchers and officers.

He smiled, remembering one of the first questions that came over his police radio.

“You got any traffic?” he was asked.

“I was in the country and there wasn’t a car around me,” Conklin said, chuckling at how he came to understand there was “radio traffic” as well as vehicle traffic.  Conklin found that law enforcement fit him well and, after a time, Lois Conklin found a way to resolve the stress of wondering whether he husband was safe on the job.

“I did fret,” she said, “but one night when I was crying, worried … I just prayed. I said, ‘Lord, you know where he is. Please take care of him,’ and I was over it.”

Conklin’s goal, though, always had been to become a KHP trooper.

That never left his mind as he worked his way up from deputy to undersheriff and then was hired as an officer with the Paola Police Department. He’d applied for the latter position at the suggestion of the sheriff.

“If you want to stay in this, you need to get something permanent,” Conklin recalled the sheriff telling him. An undersheriff could be out of work if the sheriff wasn’t re-elected and, at that time, elections were held every two years.

Conklin also had applied to the KHP about that time, gone through the testing and interviews, and had been notified that he had just missed the hiring cut.

He figured he’d be staying a while when he started his new job as police officer.

“I was working out of the grab bag,” he said of the uniforms he’d initially been given to wear at Paola PD. They were faded and worn and needed to be replaced, so Paola Police Chief Jack West, who later would become assistant director of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, took him to KC Customs in Kansas City to get fitted for new uniforms.

Measurements had taken and the order was being written when a KC Customs employee came downstairs looking for John Conklin.

“He said, ‘You are to call the colonel of the highway patrol immediately,’” Conklin said.

West realized what that meant.

“Jack told them to tear up the order,” Conklin said.

With his goal met, Conklin became part of the second class to graduate from the new Highway Patrol Academy and was assigned to work in the Leavenworth area for seven years. When a trooper position opened in Chase County, Conklin applied for, and was assigned, to the job. He was the only applicant.

In the beginning, Conklin and then-Sheriff Francis Towle were the only law enforcement officers living in Chase County, and there was plenty to keep them busy, including a standoff-shootout.

The pair took care of each other, each managing to save to other’s life in dangerous situations.

Conklin remembered he and Towle were working a wreck on an icy highway when he noticed a car barreling toward them. Conklin was unable to speak and, instead, took immediate action.

“I reached over and just pushed him,” he said. “He went over the guard rail” and the car slid into where Towle had been standing.”

Towle continued to influence Conklin’s life, even after both no longer were law enforcement officers.

The sheriff had become magistrate judge and Conklin already had retired from the patrol when a new security system went into effect at the Lyon County Courthouse.

“Francis called and said, ‘Hey,’” Conklin said, describing how Towle had described the situation and recommended Conklin give the security officer’s job a try.

“I was the first security guard here,” Conklin said.

The new workplace, confined strictly to the courthouse, was a contrast to patrolling multiple counties. He’d enforced laws across the state and guarded every president who appeared in Kansas during his service in the highway patrol.

He liked the security guard job, though, and it lasted until he got another call from Towle.

“He was getting ready to retire, and he said, ‘Hey,’” Conklin recalled with a laugh that made the rest of the story obvious.

John Conklin has seen and done much from his offices and courtrooms in the oldest and the newest courthouses in the state of Kansas.

As magistrate, Conklin has presided over first appearances, preliminary hearings, juvenile, probate and a variety of other cases.

“Some of the most fun were adoptions,” he said. “They bring in a little baby and the parents are so happy.”

“We adopted one ourselves, so we know the happiness of it,” Lois Conklin added.

There were the troubling cases, too, he said.

“Things you wake up in the middle of the night, wondering, ‘Did I do the right thing?’” he said.

Today, about 12 years after that call from Towle, Conklin was to be the guest of honor at a second reception, this time at the Chase County Courthouse. At the end of the day, his retirement will be official.

He said he’ll enjoy the extra time he’ll have to spend with their four children and their families; there will be a little more traveling added to the couple’s schedule, and, he said, there’ll be more time for fishing and hunting.

“He’s got to make a rocking horse for our granddaughter,” Lois Conklin added, smiling as she interjected a dose of retirement reality, “and when he’s bored with that, he can run the vacuum cleaner.”