Little by little

When warmer weather rolls around and those who love the outdoors go and enjoy Adair County’s lakes and parks, Kevin Blazek, who is retiring as County Conservation Director, will no longer need to be on call keeping watch over them as a law enforcement officer.

Blazek, 66, has spent 43 years in his post and has seen lots of changes. Dominic Johnson began Monday to begin learning Blazek’s position from the expert himself. A story will be printed in the Adair County Free Press introducing Johnson in the coming weeks.

Blazek, who lives in Greenfield has his sons, Kenneth and Joel, and his wife, Marcy, is looking forward to more family time as he retires, and time that he can enjoy the outdoors without professional commitments.

Blazek is the subject of the February edition in the “People of Adair County” series for 2019, which is printed the first week of each month.

Loving the outdoors

Learning what hard work was from his father, Dale, who had a field tiling business, Kevin grew up around Creston. He also learned how to weld from his father, equipment repair and other things.

“When I graduated high school, I set up to go to Southwestern Community College with the expectation that I was going to go to [Northwest Missouri State University in] Maryville to become an Industrial Arts Instructor,” Blazek said, explaining he enjoyed woodworking, working with metal and engines of all kinds. “The background with my dad, this retirement is going to be the first time since 1966 that I have not had a full-time job or was in school with a part-time job.”

After he had studied a year at Southwestern, Blazek had a cousin who had studied in the law schools at Drake University and Texas Tech University and called one day to introduce Blazek to a strong Wildlife Management program TTU had. Blazek graduated from Texas Tech in December 1974.

“Growing up, enjoying the outdoors was an extremely important part of our family,” Blazek said. “So, I looked into that program, and the out-of-state tuition wasn’t much more there than it was at Southwestern Community College when I first went down. I got down there, really enjoyed it and that was the career change by happenstance or luck.”

Starting from scratch

After spending a year working for his father back in Union County after coming back from Texas, Blazek was hired as the Adair County Conservation Board’s first full-time employee and his first day on the job was Jan. 1, 1976.

“When I started, we didn’t have a decent place to work in the winter. We had some decent equipment — a couple of tractors, a couple of Bush Hog mowers — but for hand tools, the total inventory of hand tools when I started was a crescent wrench, a hammer, a grease gun, a paint brush, a spade and a shovel, and we had no vehicles,” Blazek said. “There have been a lot of changes over the years.”

Then vs. Now

A big step was taken forward by the Adair County Conservation Board when it acquired its first commercial mower. Soon, another would be purchased. This made ability to maintain the ever growing amount of land the department was responsible for much more feasible.

Blazek’s job description is vast, and until about 1980, he was the lone ranger for full-time staff in the department.

“When I first started, 90 percent of my time was spent in the field doing the work, which included sitting on a mower, running a weed trimmer, building things, cutting thistles, cleaning bathrooms, picking up garbage, patrolling the parks on nights and weekends doing law enforcement work, helping the state conservation officer during the hunting seasons, collecting camping fees and visiting with the people using the parks,” Blazek said.

Now, Blazek’s job is very different due to constantly changing standards that need to be met and well documented.

Alan Carr, who was Park Ranger in the county for over 20 years, left to go to Union County, and interestingly enough, he retired from that position at Green Valley State Park north of Creston last week. Jonathan Ehler has served as Park Ranger for the last several years, working with Blazek and others within the department. Many others have contributed along the way as well, all overseen by the Conservation Board.

“As time has shifted, the world has become more complicated and demanding. My time in the field has become less and less and my time in the office to administer has become more and more,” Blazek explained. “I enjoy being in the field much more than I do being in the office, but that’s just the way things are. It’s much more complicated today to do the same job than it was when I first started. You have to make so many considerations.”

Expanding a little at a time

On Blazek’s watch, the Adair County Conservation Board has made leaps and bounds in terms of adding acres to their areas they maintain, adding more areas and other projects they’ve done.

In his over four decades on the job, Blazek has seen additions to the Mormon Trail Lake near Bridgewater and three additions to the Middle River Forest Area, which is the headwaters to the Middle River Water Trail, the only water trail where you can canoe underneath a covered bridge. Instrumental in the Middle River Forest Area was a land donation from Leonard Ahl, who served on the Conservation Board from 1965 to ‘87.

The Conservation Board has also acquired the Rick Sullivan Wildlife Area in southwestern Adair County, the Wright Timber Wildlife Area in the eastern portion of the county, the Jesse James Train Robbery Site near Adair and the Karl and Grace Correll Wildlife Area northeast of Adair, which is named after Karl Correll, one of the five charter members of the Conservation Board.

A great team

Whether it is parks maintenance, budgeting, working with the public, being a source of information for wildlife management, food plots, prairie management or seedings, Blazek and his staff do it, but they do everything with the support of the Adair County Conservation Board, and the members are appointed by the Board of Supervisors. Currently, members are John Gruss, Doug Davidson, Patricia Randel and Kaye Queck.

“They are volunteers and don’t get paid for their services, and we’ve had some very long term Conservation Board members. It’s in their blood, they’re very dedicated to conservation and outdoor recreation,” Blazek said. “They meet once a month. Their responsibility is to make decisions on what kind of development happens. They make policy decisions. We’ll bring forth something and they’re the ones who say yes to doing a project. Once we secure the funds for it, it’s up to the staff to see that it gets done.”

Little by little

Blazek maintains that anything he and the Conservation Board has accomplished has been because they’ve taken growth in little chunks at a time.

“When we made improvements, there were no really big improvements that happened, yet when you look at a 5-year period, you look at it and see we’ve made some changes. Look at what has happened at a 10-year period, 20 years or 40 years, there were significant changes,” Blazek said.

One of those visual changes can be seen in a picture Blazek has of the installation of the Henry A. Wallace marker at the Orient Lake in the late 1970s.

“My great aunt was very big in the historical society,” Blazek said, noting the historical society was responsible for placing the marker there at the time. “There’s a picture taken there of them putting it in and if you look down through the campground, the trees aren’t very big around. There’s no shade and you can see the mansion to the west of the park very easily. You go to that same spot today and you don’t see that mansion because it’s all grown up so much. That’s a huge change.”

Appreciation

Whether it’s the Conservation Board or others he’s worked with over time, Blazek said he has a lot of appreciation for those he’s partnered with on all his career’s projects. He said others are asking that there be a retirement reception for him when he decides when his last day is, though he isn’t sure when that will be yet.

“The community’s been a very good community to work in, for the most part,” Blazek said.