Gladys Johns, a 102-year-old Lawrence woman who was Douglas County’s first and only female sheriff, died Saturday in Lawrence.

A lifetime Lawrence resident, Johns became sheriff in 1950 because her husband, William “Dunie” N. Johns Jr., died less than a year before completing his term. She filled the post until the next election.

“The undersheriff did all the work,” she told the Journal-World in 2000.

Johns didn’t brag about her experience as sheriff, friend Lori Wagner said.

Wagner is one of three women who helped take care of Johns during the last years of her life — driving her to church or to the grocery store, for example. But Wagner knew Johns about seven years before she learned her friend once was the face of law and order in the county.

“She said she made the deputy do all the work, so in terms of what kind of role she actually took, I don’t know if it was more of a symbolic-type thing,” Wagner said. “She didn’t really want to play it up.”

Another of Johns’ caretakers, Melissa Warren, described her as independent and strong-minded. Warren, who knew Johns through a mutual acquaintance, began helping Johns with yard work about 20 years ago at her home in the 1900 block of New Hampshire Street.

At the time, Johns was in her early 80s.

“She had this real old Lawn-Boy lawn mower, and she couldn’t pull that rope any more,” Warren said. “She said, ‘You can come over and pull that rope for me, and I’ll push it around the yard.'”

That energy continued until just before her death, Warren said. “Up until Tuesday, she was still walking down the hallway and going down to get dinner,” Warren said.

Johns was a Kansas Jayhawks basketball fan, Wagner said. She volunteered with the Meals on Wheels program and often chauffeured other senior citizens who didn’t drive.

“She’d say, ‘I’ve got to help the old ladies. Somebody’s got to take care of them,'” Warren said. “She always had a strong thing of service to other people, so she had a lot of friends that way. …

“Sometimes she’d say, ‘I don’t know why I’m still here, but God must have a purpose for me to still be here.'”