The Judge

It’s great to see pholks take big forward steps in their lives.

So if was a pleasure last week when I learned that Jennifer Conn Shirk got the news that she will be the next Tulare County Superior Court Judge.

It’s no big secret that Jennifer and I go back quite a few years. We first met when she wasn’t yet a teenager and I was more or less a cub reporter and Visalia was a city of less than 30,000 pholks.

Jennifer has accomplished a lot over the years and no doubt will continue to make her mark in Tulare County and perhaps much further.

It makes me feel pretty darned good to have written about two of the more important steps taken by this woman, not yet aged 50, but close.

Having written several thousand news stories and columns over the 40-plus years of my journalistic tenure, there are a couple dozen which stick out in the old memory bank. And one of them focused on a young lady, Jennifer Conn, age 9, who had her dream of owning her own horse come true—well, sort of.

Perhaps it’s not a big percentage of you who remember the comic strip “Priscilla’s Pop” which featured the Nutchell family: Waldo (Priscilla’s Pop), Hazel, the mother, Priscilla and older brother Carlyle and Priscilla’s two young friends, Hollyhock and Stuart. And, there was the family dog, Oliver.

Priscilla also was obsessed with the idea of owning a horse and “Pop” promised that someday she would get one. Jennifer, like Priscilla, her comic strip pal, certainly wasn’t lacking in determination and initiative. As a nine-year old, Jennifer believed that since the comic strip appeared in her local paper, the Times-Delta, the cartoonist worked there. Little Miss Conn wrote to cartoonist Al Vermeer, at the T-D urging him to have Pop give Priscilla a horse because Jennifer’s pop, Ken Conn, said she would get a horse when Prisicilla got hers.

The comic strip was syndicated, of course, and an editor read it and sends it to me with the assignment of putting together a cute story. It worked out quite well with a photo and some feel-good quotes and all that.

So pholks, you know what happened, right? After years and years, the comic strip made the news when “Pop” finally gave in and announced that Priscilla was going to get her horse. There were headlines across the nation, especially where “Priscilla’s Pop” was carried and Jennifer and hundreds of other girls everywhere were in Seventh Heaven. Jennifer again made local headlines. Ken Conn was going to be stuck with getting his daughter a horse. It almost happened, but not quite. This is what happened:

When I talked with Jennifer last week, she filled in a couple of blank spots in my recollection of the story.

Young Jennifer did not really get her horse but was pretty happy when Ken arranged for two years of riding lessons. It was not until after the Visalia woman became an attorney that her “horse came in” when she purchased one. Today Visalia’s newest Superior Court Judge-to-be refers to her former horse as “just a hay burner” citing the adage that “be careful what you wish for, you might get it all,” often comes all too true.

Not actually getting her own horse while still a young girl but getting her riding lessons certainly seemed to turn out well. Dreams are funny that way.

Jennifer is certainly more than delighted with the reality of her other dreams—becoming an attorney and eventually a judge. Obviously the results involved lots of dedication and hard work and not just dreams.

Of course, being immersed in the legal profession certainly has played a key role in her career paths and successes.

Not only was her father an attorney and a Superior Court Judge, but her legal partners all have worn or still wear the black robes in Tulare County.

She partnered with attorneys Joseph Kalashian and Gary Paden and with Lloyd Hicks, all Superior Court Judges. She currently runs her law practice in the Bradley building, in which she has an ownership. That building has a storied law office history and was the office of retired Judge Nat Bradley, member of a long-time legal profession family.

So when Jennifer is sworn into office later this month, by her father Kenneth Conn, it will be another dream come true.

Miles can be reached at mshuper@valleyvoicenewspaper.com