Career fit for a King

One bouquet after another flew Bill King’s way late Tuesday morning during a retirement reception for Allen County’s director of Public Works.
Commissioners, in their adulation, decreed Tuesday Bill King Day in the county. Reality would be better served to say every day for nearly 23 years — King’s tenure as what many refer to as road boss — has been his day. They allowed King has made Allen the standard of many counties for how he has managed and responded to public works problems — roads, bridges, airport, quarry and landfill; never, it seems, was there a day when he didn’t have his finger on the pulse of his department.
King was effusive in talking about “my crew.”
He always answered his cell, even at 5 a.m., and while his answers sometimes weren’t what callers wanted to hear, he was honest and above board in all he did, several commissioners — “my bosses,” he calls them — said in praise that was honest and sweet but not sticky.
Never one to miss an opportunity to add a little levity, King noted he was wearing black trousers and his successor, Mitch Garner, “is the guy in white,” albeit khaki.
Gordon Conger was a commissioner when King was hired.
“I’ve been involved with public policy for a number of years,” Conger said, and quickly threw his support to the Missourian who showed up a little late for his interview — “I was up all night working.” “He understood leadership and had been in government, and he far exceeded our expectations.”
That was a common refrain from commissioners present and past.
Conger said King arrived at a time when strong supervision was needed. “The county was having problems, we lacked leadership” — the problems “weren’t personnel, per se. With Bill, we could see opportunities.”
Dick Works, a commissioner when King arrived and until a year ago, often moved in statewide county circles and seldom mentioned King’s name without positive responses. “We were the envy of commissioners across the state because of Bill,” he said. In all the years the two worked together, “he made few decisions I wasn’t comfortable with — I can’t remember any.” Works said he also always was appreciative of how King “stood up for his employees.”
Tom Williams, commission chairman, remembered a particular instance when King went beyond the call.
When he was sheriff, Williams said, he needed a place for officers to shoot — annual certification with firearms is part of being in law enforcement. “I mentioned it to Bill one day,” he said. “A couple of days later he came by and said, ‘Let’s go for a ride.’”
The ride ended south of the county quarry/landfill where King’s crew had fashioned an earthen berm as a backdrop for a shooting range. Just the way he is, Williams said, “always willing to help out.”

ABOUT SEVEN years ago, just before his 55th birthday, King suffered a heart attack. That, he told the Register, set his course toward retirement.
“I had a younger brother who died at 46 after a heart attack,” which made him realize that life not only has limits, and also stress of supervising a large department and dealing almost daily with spur-of-the-minute problems wasn’t good for his health.  “I’ve been the boss since I was 26” in road and bridge work in the St. Louis area, and for Allen County since Nov. 30, 1992.
“I started right then working on a succession plan,” King said, which led to his recommendation of having Mitch Garner take his place with retirement at 62 — “I was 62 Sunday,” and walked out of his office Tuesday for the last  time as a county employee. His official retirement is at the end of work Friday, but he had days off that put him home three days earlier.
“It’s finished,” he said abruptly, as is his nature, with his small farm east of Carlyle — hobby farm, he calls it — beckoning.
When he arrived the county landfill was just getting off the ground under sub-title D regulations, which are much stricter than those previous and resulted in many city and county landfills closing. “I spent a lot nights at the start going to meetings to help put together a regional landfill plan,” he recalled.
His first major “on-my-own” project was purchase of a new crusher for the quarry. “We bid it three times before getting what we wanted,” he said. “Half a million dollars was a lot of money then.”
Those projects and a multitude of others are behind King and he is comfortable with handing the reins to Garner, several years airport manager and more recently a constant companion of King’s to make certain his successor was well-founded in all he would face.
“I liked what I do, but I think Bill,” he said from third person perspective, “needs less stress.”
Other than a tad of farm work, fishing and hunting deer in early winter — one of his favorite pursuits — King doesn’t anticipate any great changes in retirement. His wife, Sharon, is a registered nurse and works for the state, a job she has no intention of leaving anytime soon. Their son, Bill, is a police officer in Olathe, not too much of a drive, and their daughter Andrea, also a registered nurse, lives in Austin, Texas.
Parting words, with regard to stress concerns that came to roost after a heart attack: “My job was easy because of the people I worked with.”