One marker is in sight for Thomas Saxton.
The judge bangs the gavel for the final time June 30, marking the end of a 27½-year career behind the bench.
He’s down, more or less, to 17 days, 6 hours and 25 minutes: “Not that I’m counting or anything,” he joked.
Saxton has served as a magistrate judge since January 1989 for Kansas’ 31st Judicial District, focusing primarily on Allen and Wilson counties. He’s also served the past 25 years as Iola Municipal Court judge.
It’s an extensive career for a judge who, prior to being named to the bench in 1989, had never officially studied law.
“I guess it’s rare,” said Saxton, an Iola native whose wide-ranging background includes degrees in psychology, math and natural science along with three technical degrees relating to electricity.
Saxton’s varied work history took him from mental health and as a steelworker to the coal industry.
Actually, it started as a child in his father’s store.
His father, Tom, ran the Otasco store in Iola for more than 33 years.
“As soon as you were old enough to hold a screwdriver, you were putting together bicycles, wagons, helping with the store,” he said.
After high school, Saxton attended Allen Community College followed by Pittsburg State University.
Saxton worked briefly for Poli-Tron, a livestock feeding manufacturer. (As an aside, Poli-Tron was acquired years later by B&W Trailer Hitches of Humboldt, and continues to manufacture livestock feeders.)
He then worked at a mental health center in Pittsburg, and then as a grants writer and equal opportunity officer for SEK-CAP, the community action program for southeast Kansas.
He moved from there to the coal industry, as a vice president for Atkinson Industries in Pittsburg.
In the mid-1980s the coal industry began to founder. Atkinson was bought out by a conglomerate, “and jobs were going by the wayside.”
Unsure of where to go, Saxton sought a job in his native Iola as a probation officer in 1986.
