A trio of departments in the Douglas County Courthouse will be closed for several hours on Friday to allow staff members to attend the funeral of a longtime county employee.

Dennis Albers, the county’s director of geographical information systems, died Feb. 2 while shoveling snow at his home in Olathe, according to a county official. He was a 24-year employee of the county, and several of the departments that he worked mostly closely with are closing temporarily because all members of the department wish to attend the funeral in Olathe, said Kay Pesnell, Douglas County Register of Deeds.

“It was just so sudden,” Pesnell said of Albers’ death. “He was fun to work with. He was just a really neat guy to have around.”

The Register of Deeds Office will be closed from 8 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Friday for the services. The GIS and the appraiser’s office will be closed from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Friday. All other county departments will remain open.

Albers, 57, performed a number of mapping activities for the county. He also was a founding member of JumpStartSudan, an organization that provided humanitarian relief for the African country. He is survived by, among others, wife, Christine, and sons Mark and Michael.

Pesnell said closing a county department is rare, but is occasionally done for funerals. She said the last time her department closed was about four years ago when a staff member died.