Harley Haskin

Harley Vigour Haskin, 97, died Wednesday, January 16, 2008 at Olathe Medical Center.

Harley donated his remains for research and education to the Kansas University Medical Center.

He was preceded in death by a grand daughter, Mandy Haskin.

He is survived by his wife of 73 years, Gerry, their three children: Patricia Scarbrough, of Advance, North Carolina, Mike and his wife, Pam, of Olathe, and Mark and his wife, Renee, of Kansas City; three grandchildren: Jennifer Stroud and husband, Donnie, Lauren Haskin and Zach Haskin; and great grandsons Harley Stroud and Stone Stroud, and by his sister Bernice Penner and his brother Sam Haskin and wife Dorothy.

Harley was born and grew up on the family farm between Olathe and Lenexa, went to the same rural one-room school which his father had attended, located on the family farm, then to high school at Olathe and to Baker University at Baldwin City, Kansas. He received his law degree after four years of night school from the Kansa s City School of Law and was admitted to the Kansas bar in 1936.

During the Great Depression, immediately after graduating from Baker he started working for Patrons Mutual Insurance Company. In a few years he became its secretary and chief executive and continued his association with that company as legal counsel and board member for sixty-four years. He was sent to Europe in World War II with the 94th Infantry Division where he service 14 months in the G-2 section, through France, Belgium, German and to Czechoslovakia. After the was he was elected and served six years as Johnson County's Probate and Juvenile Judge, from which he retired to form his small law firm in Olathe where he practiced until he retired in 1980.

One of his proudest activities was helping to organize and charter Olathe's hospital, and to chair the fund drive which made construction possible and to watch it grow. He served some 20 years as trustee of Baker University; and during the decades of his community involvement, he took his turn as president of each of these organizations; The Olathe Chamber of Commerce, Kansas Association of Mutual Insurance Companies, National Association of Grange Insurance Companies, Kansas Association of Probate and Juvenile Judges, Johnson County Bar Association, and the Olathe Rotary Club.

He and Gerry moved their respective Methodist Churches memberships to the Olathe Methodist church when they were married in 1934. Harley chaired the building committees for the construction of the church which is now know as the Center of Grace. When it was jokingly observed that he had served in every leadership office of the church except in the Women's Society, he was promptly invested with the title of honorary president. After retirement Harley and Gerry moved to a recreational home and acreage west of Olathe where he continued his hobby of enjoying and photographing nature and from which to enjoy further travels.

In 2007 he was honor with a plaque on the "Wall of Fame" of the Olathe District Schools

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests contributions to Grace United Methodist Church or Lakeview Village Endowment Fund.