photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Court reporter Mary Kay Howe at her retirement ceremony on June 6, 2025, at the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

Mary Kay Howe has been typing out the record in Douglas County courtrooms for nearly 50 years now. But there was a time in the ’70s when it looked like she’d be leaving the profession in record time instead.

Howe, who retired from Douglas County District Court this past week, told the Journal-World about her first court reporting job, in Wyandotte County. In her very first week, she said, there was a case involving a public official, and the press was showing up right after the hearings and hounding her for transcripts.

“This was before computers,” Howe said. “This was typing on onion skin paper, and it was just overwhelming for me, and Wyandotte County was overwhelming.”

She didn’t even make it a year there. At one point, her car was stolen. Once, the judge asked her what neighborhood she had moved into. She told him, “and he goes, ‘Oh, you need to get out.’

“‘Oh, no,’ I said, ‘Really?’ And he goes, ‘Quickly.'”

Her experience in Wyandotte County almost made her quit the field before she had really gotten started. But in 1977, she gave court reporting another shot in Douglas County — and it would take miles upon miles of onion skin paper to record all she’s done here since then.

Howe has been a part of Douglas County courts for about as long as the court building, the Judicial and Law Enforcement Center. She’s worked with several judges in Division 2 — Judge James Paddock, Judge Jack Murphy, and most recently Judge Sally Pokorny, whom she counts as “one of my best friends.”

In addition to typing down every word that’s said in the proceedings in the courtroom, she’s been a comforting, reassuring presence to those who testify there — and has even been a sort of mentor to Pokorny herself.

Howe’s last hearing was Thursday in Douglas County’s Behavioral Health Court, and on Friday, she was honored with a retirement party in Pokorny’s courtroom, with a standing-room only crowd.

Before going off the record for the last time, Howe went on the record with the Journal-World to talk about the cases she’s worked on, the people she’s met and the things she’s appreciated most in her nearly half a century in Douglas County District Court.

• • •

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

A stenotype machine on June 5, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

Howe comes from a whole clan of court reporters — two sisters, a daughter, a daughter-in-law, even a cousin have worked or are working in the field. But not all of them work on the old-school device Howe uses — the stenotype machine.

It’s clear by looking at its long, rounded-off keys that operating the machine isn’t like typing on a computer keyboard. For one thing, there are only 24 keys — not even as many letters as there are in the alphabet.

Stenographers learn to spell words in a different way than the rest of us, using a phonetic system where words are spelled like they sound. They also have to learn to do it with at least 95% accuracy and at speeds that typists on a conventional keyboard can’t match.

A stenographer like Howe normally can manage at least 225 words per minute and can go as fast as 360 words per minute at times. By contrast, according to typing.com, the average person’s typing speed is about 50 words per minute on a conventional keyboard, and even the absolute fastest typists can’t go much faster than 200 words per minute on one.

To make things even more efficient, Howe said her machine is set up with a personal dictionary where she can type certain common phrases with only a couple of buttons.

In the ’70s, stenographer training was expected to take 48 months. Howe said she managed to finish it in 16, and even today, training on new techniques that don’t use the stenotype machine can take a year to complete, Howe said.

But the technical skills are far from the only difficult part of a court reporter’s job. There’s also the mental struggle of working in a court setting, where emotions can run high and details can sometimes be grisly.

• • •

Over the decades, Howe has been in court for some of the most horrific cases to take place in Douglas County, and has had to take down every detail for the record.

One of the worst, she says, was the case of John William.

William was a transient man on trial for the murder of 9-year-old Richard Settlemyre. Howe recounted some of the details of that case: that Richard, who had a troubled home life, would go down by the Kansas River where William lived and the two would fish and spend time together.

In 1988, Richard’s dismembered body was found in the river and along its banks.

William was tried in 1989, and the jury found him guilty after just two hours of deliberation. He was sentenced to life in prison, and in 2021 he was denied parole until at least 2028.

The front page of the Lawrence Journal-World the day William was convicted.

William’s road to trial wasn’t a smooth one — he was found incompetent and spent months in Larned State Hospital to restore his competency — and the trial itself didn’t go smoothly, either. Sometimes he interrupted the proceedings with bizarre outbursts, and Judge Paddock had to order the jury out of the courtroom at one point until William had calmed down.

But for Howe, the trial was difficult for more personal reasons, too: The young, blonde-haired victim reminded her of her son.

“I had a blonde-haired 10-year-old boy at the time,” she said. “It’s the one case that really affected me, just because of that. I think I could usually, most times, go home and not think about some of the stuff that I would hear … but that one was one that did.”

Other cases are difficult not because of what someone allegedly did, but because of what they’re doing right now.

Howe mentioned the case of Scott Staggs, who was sentenced to more than 50 years in 2003 for a kidnapping and robbery at the Jayhawk Motel. Staggs was so unruly that court had to take place at the Douglas County Jail.

“The defendant was the type you needed that,” she said. “All of the security around him were in riot gear, and even with all those people around him, he was able to kick the counsel table on its top.”

More recently, she said, there was the case of Derrick Del Reed. Reed, who was 18 at the time of his trial in 2024, was found not guilty in the March 2023 fatal shooting of 14-year-old Kamarjay Shaw.

The leadup to the trial featured a number of intense moments, including a hearing where Judge Pokorny had to clear the courtroom following repeated disturbances in the gallery; the crowd then spilled out of the building and disturbances and fighting continued outside.

Before that hearing, Howe said, she’d never seen a “riot” in the courtroom or the whole courthouse locked down. Even more than four decades into the job, court could still be full of surprises.

Of course, trials and hearings for serious felony cases aren’t the only things court reporters transcribe. Some of the most difficult cases, in Howe’s opinion, aren’t crimes at all. They’re divorce cases.

“I think there’s more danger in a badly contested divorce than there is a murder trial, because the emotions are so high in those,” Howe said. “And I never liked hearing the cases where kids were being put in the middle.”

• • •

Sometimes, even for a trained court reporter, the stress can get to be too much.

Howe remembers a case in Paddock’s court, back when she was eight months pregnant with her oldest child. The case involved an explosion and a fire in downtown Lawrence. The hearing had run past 5 p.m., and there were half a dozen attorneys in the courtroom talking over each other.

No court reporter wants to be in a situation where multiple people are talking at once, and finally, Howe had had enough.

“Usually we’re the quiet one in the corner just listening to everything,” Howe said. “But I (stood) up and I said, ‘I can’t take it any more!'”

An outburst like that from a court reporter was almost unheard of, she said — especially in the courtroom of Paddock, who took rules and decorum very seriously.

But she said Paddock took it in stride.

“Judge Paddock, in his little half glasses, looks over at me,” she said. “And he goes, ‘I think we’ll recess for the evening.'”

A portrait of Judge James Paddock hangs in the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

Paddock, who retired in 1994 and died in 2024, was the first judge Howe worked with closely in Douglas County.

About many things, Paddock could be strict, she said, and that extended beyond just the courtroom. She recalls how Paddock reacted one time when the court staff made popcorn in the office microwave.

“Popcorn leaves a smell. And he confronted the administrative assistant and me, (saying) that, ‘We cannot have smells in the office. It’s just inappropriate,'” Howe said, laughing.

“Yeah, like I said, he was old school.”

Looking back, Howe recognizes the impact that Paddock’s professional attitude made.

“He had such an aura about him,” Howe said, that “you really did respect him, and it kind of made you respect the bench, you know, just because of how he presented himself.”

After Paddock’s retirement, Howe worked with Judge Murphy. Murphy was a farmer in addition to being a judge, and that could lead to some unusual situations in court.

“We’d get lots of calls that his cows were loose,” Howe said with a laugh. “We might have to take a recess so he could figure out his cows.”

A portrait of Judge Jack Murphy hangs in the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

• • •

But of all the judges Howe worked with, the one she says is her favorite is Judge Pokorny, who took over from Murphy in 2009.

Howe describes Pokorny as a very thoughtful and caring judge. “She is amazing to me,” Howe said.

“She can put a defendant in prison and they end up thanking her,” Howe went on. “She just words it in a way of, ‘You’re going to be better off because of this,’ and the defendant says, ‘OK, well, thank you.'”

At the retirement party on Friday, Pokorny said Howe made a big impression on her, too.

She recalled what Howe and another veteran District Court staffer, now also retired, would tell her when she was new to the bench and first getting her bearings.

“Every day they would look at me, and at some point in the day the sentence would start with, ‘Well, now you are the judge, and you can do whatever you think is right and appropriate,'” Pokorny said.

Then came the “but.”

“‘But in the circumstances, we have often seen Judge (Michael) Malone or Judge (Robert) Fairchild or Judge Paddock do …’ what? Fill in whatever crazy thing,'” Pokorny said. “Pretty soon, my first instincts became good instincts because of that good training.”

Howe knows that saying goodbye to Pokorny’s court will be one of the hardest parts of retiring. She and Pokorny, she said, are “two strong women” who have seen it all together.

“I couldn’t ask for a better boss, but truly, I consider (her) one of my best friends,” Howe said.

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Court reporter Mary Kay Howe hugs Judge Sally Pokorny at Howe’s retirement ceremony on June 6, 2025, at the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.

• • •

Pretty much every job has changed a lot since the 1970s, and Howe said court reporting is no exception.

For one thing, court reporters today are less likely to type on a machine like Howe does. Instead, you might see them repeating the words said in court into a special mask that fits over their face.

This technology is called “voice writing,” and Howe has never tried it herself, but it’s becoming more common. Her daughter is one of the many court reporters trained on it. Like stenography, it has its own special techniques to make the process faster and more efficient.

“They still train people on (stenography),” Howe said. “It’s just that, boy, people can get through school a lot quicker (with voice writing). You know, today, everybody wants quicker.”

Another difference: the number of people getting certified. When she first started her training, it was common to see 50 or more people taking the annual certification tests, Howe said. Now the state is lucky to have 10 trainees in a year.

It’s not just the court reporters who are changing — the things they record are changing as well. New kinds of words are being used in court, like text message abbreviations and other slang that doesn’t lend itself well to phonetic transcription.

“In the last few years, they’re using so many text messages now in court,” she said. “… They don’t come up as words, you know; a lot of times it’s just letters. It might mean ‘talk to you later,’ but how do you transcribe ‘TTYL’ in the record?”

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Court reporter Mary Kay Howe types on a stenotype machine on June 5, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

• • •

The record that Howe is typing is impartial — it’s just what people say, not what she thinks about it.

But court reporters are human, too, and they silently sympathize with people and judge people like anyone else. Howe says that in her profession, “we’re the silent ones, but with so many other thoughts going on with our inside voices.”

Sometimes, she’s suspicious of what she hears. “So many times,” when a defendant takes the stand, she’s there “with my straight face listening, thinking, ‘You’re so lying out of your teeth.'”

Other times, she can tell that a witness is traumatized or terrified.

That was her own experience, she said, the one and only time she ever took the stand in court. It wasn’t even for anything serious, she said, and all she can remember of the experience was being scared and nervous.

Over the decades, she’s developed a personal policy that she follows when someone is sworn in to testify: Smile.

Even this simple gesture, in her experience, has made witnesses feel more at ease during what might be one of the most stressful situations of their lives.

“I had a witness one time, after the hearing was over, say ‘I was so nervous coming in here, but you had that nice smile on your face, and you just made me feel so comfortable that I felt like I could get through it,'” Howe said.

Knowing she could make someone’s experience in court a little less intimidating is one of the many things she’ll miss.

She’ll miss her colleagues. She’ll miss the atmosphere of the courthouse. And she’ll miss one other thing as she settles into the routine of babysitting her grandkids full-time and vacationing in places like Florida and California.

Namely, the surprises of a job where every day brings something new.

“I love this career. It is so interesting,” she said. “You just never know what you’re going to hear.”

photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Court reporter Mary Kay Howe wipes tears away at her retirement ceremony on June 6, 2025, at the Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center.