These prominent golden-agers talk about lifelong achievements, what they learned through the years, what they are planning on next and how living longer is a rewarding daily adventure.
Written by David Hodes
Interviewed by David M. Block, David Hodes and Pete Mundo
John Dillingham
Birth date: January 9, 1939, Age: 86
“Study history because life works in strange ways, and when you look at the big picture, it makes a lot of sense.”
Sitting in his office on the top floor of the Livestock Building in Kansas City’s West Bottoms, John Dillingham has a file of six pages stuffed with lines and lines of accomplishments, board memberships and honors he earned over the years—all ready for review.
Accomplishments
He was the former director of the 125-year-old American Royal, receiving the title of Honorary Director of the American Royal for Life in 2014. He was the former vice president of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners, as appointed by Governor John Ashcraft.
Dillingham was the former co-chair of the Friends of the Aquarium. He chaired or co-chaired 10 county or citywide elections for issues and candidates. He led the project to name I-635 after Kansas Senator Harry Darby (I-670 is the Dillingham Expressway, named for his dad Jay).
He is also a former chairman of the American Royal, and the former president of the National World War I Museum. He is the former president of the Metropolitan Community College Foundation and the Missouri Institute for Justice. The Missouri House of Representatives named Dillingham an “Outstanding Missourian” on April 25, 2007.
And on and on. The extensive list is dizzying proof of Dillingham’s skills as a visionary leader, a solid fundraiser and a man of integrity. He carried on the work of his father, and now, he’s working with his son Allen to carry on the work still to be done as the Kansas City stockyards embraces a hip and happening vibe, with new startups crowding into the area.
Stockyards Heyday
The stockyards were a defining industry in the development of Kansas City. During their heyday beginnings in the late 1800s, the stockyards had a daily quota of 170,000 animals, represented 91 percent of the city’s industrial output, employed 20,000 people, received livestock from 35 states and shipped to 42 states.
By the early 1900s, it was the largest horse and mule market in the country and the second busiest stockyard in the country. According to the Kansas City Kansan newspaper, in 1923, 2,631,808 cattle were received at the Kansas City stockyards. Activity there peaked in the 1940s. The chaotic flood of 1951 essentially killed the business. The last cattle auction was held in September 1991.
The Dillinghams lived on a farm just 10 miles north of the stockyards, the fifth generation at that time to live north of the river. John’s dad, Jay—6 foot 3 inches tall and 250 pounds—was president of the stockyards and a strict disciplinarian that John never crossed. “One of the things my dad told me early on was, ‘You need to do your chores twice a day every day of the week, and then you can do whatever else you want to do,’” Dillingham says. “You take a look at all those pages of accomplishments there I have for review, it shows that I guess I did my chores first and then went ahead and did what I wanted to do.”
Even though times are different now—the only activity at the stockyards now is the American Royal livestock show, horse show, rodeo and barbecue competition held each year in September—Dillingham continues working on the top floor of the historic livestock stockyard building. Three doors down from his office is where the Future Farmers of America was created in 1928, he says.
But he often reflects on the force for the city that the stockyards represented back in the heyday of moving cattle around the country. “‘If it wasn’t for the Kansas City Stockyards, there would be no Country Club Plaza’—my dad told me a number of times he heard J.C. Nichols say that in public,” Dillingham says. Life in the stockyards back in the early days was a rough-and-tumble existence for the cattle drivers. Personal integrity was the way people got along back then, and it remains a part of doing business today for Dillingham. “Your word was your bond here in the stockyards,” he says. “If you were to violate it, and people in those days didn’t have cell phones, the word went out and everybody stopped doing business with you, period. You screwed up and you’re out of here.”
Family History
The Dillingham family’s colorful history includes John’s namesake (and Jay’s grandfather), Sheriff John Dillingham, who served Platte County. Sheriff Dillingham was shot and killed in Farley, Missouri, in 1900. He was 47 years old. One of his sons, Henry, who was 17 at the time, shot and killed the doctor that killed his dad. Later, at age 22, Henry accepted the offer to stay on as acting sheriff of Platte County and fill out his dad’s term.
Members of a recent ceremony committee that was assembled to honor Sheriff Dillingham found his pistol, pocket watch and handcuffs, which they gave to John. “It was a call out of the blue,” he says. “So was that fate, ability, luck or divine intervention that made that happen? I didn’t know the gun was out there until two months ago. This is a true story that just happened.”
Today, Dillingham stays physically active, with the goal of “staying vertical, keep breathing.”
“I have gotten hooked on the family tree, on Ancestry (the genealogy website),” he says. “Every night, I spend an hour and a half entering names. I’m up to 390,000 in my tree now,” he says. “I’m not even near done. I’m entering right now, every three or four days, another 1,000 names, one finger at a time, literally. One of the reasons I study history is out of curiosity to learn who these various related folks are because their genes somehow pass through all of us. What percentage? Who knows? Is it 1 percent or 90 percent?”
Define ‘Busy’
Is it time to retire now? “What is the meaning of ‘retirement’? Dad was in this office till he was 97. I will have been in one of these two offices next year for 30 years. I live a very regimented life.”
He recommends simply staying busy—and having fun doing that activity doesn’t enter into it. “What’s the definition of busy? Ride a bike, go down and get the mail. Just anything. I got things to do and I do them. One might take five minutes, another takes an hour. It’s just something I got to do.”
One of the challenges he faced in his life centered around his time as a cadet at the Wentworth Military Academy. “We had 600 cadets in those days,” he says. “I went there for junior college my last year. I was the only one in the school to go through the whole year without a single demerit. And they told me that Douglas MacArthur had done that at West Point.”
Anybody that outranked you could “stick you,” or give you a demerit, Dillingham says. “When I was getting fairly close to the end of the year, and with other cadets knowing that I had no demerits, it was the time that you don’t screw up at all. That becomes an internal challenge. It keeps you out of the pool hall, the beer halls and so forth,” he says. “I’ve been inspired by seeing people achieve whatever it was, and so that always kind of motivated me to be a little better. Do a little better. So if you do that on numerous fronts, you don’t have time to screw up.”
Life is pretty simple, when it comes down to it, Dillingham says, referencing some of what he learned as a Boy Scout. “Do what I call a good turn daily and be trustworthy and tell the truth,” he says. “The older I get, those things I was taught in scouting are real. It’s as simple as the devil. Life is not that complicated. It doesn’t need to be.”
“Your word was your bond here in the stockyards.”
“What’s the definition of busy? Ride a bike, go down and get the mail. Just anything. I got things to do and I do them.”
