Former judge finds perfect job at museums division

Kenneth A. Rohrs was smiling Thursday as he packed the last of his things in his office at the Nevada Commission on Ethics.

He had spent a year as the commission's executive director, implementing the reorganization mandated by the 1998 Nevada Legislature. Now the former Ohio attorney, prosecutor and judge was taking on yet another challenge, as the new administrator of the Nevada Division of Museums and History.

"My children want to know how I managed to have a job created for me in state government," said Rohrs, 58, as he finished packing.

Before Rohrs took the law school admissions test several careers ago, he earned a bachelor's degree in history with a minor in political science and was thinking about pursuing a doctorate in history.

"I grew up in Ohio near some great museums of science and history as well as the Toledo Museum of Art, which was great because of all the corporate support it received from the three major glass manufacturers there," Rohrs said.

"My family had owned farm lands in Ohio that were very important in the westward movement of settlers across America, so I developed an interest in the migration to the western frontier."

He remained in the Toledo area while conducting his private legal practice, then serving as a prosecutor and 10 years as a judge in an Ohio Court of Common Pleas, the equivalent of Nevada's district courts. Rohrs followed that with a period traveling around the country and the world as a legal consultant and mediator.

But he had earlier come to Northern Nevada to attend the National Judicial College in Reno.

"Another judge was there from Idaho, and he and I traveled all around Northern Nevada and California. I fell in love with this area right away," he said.

Though his international travels gave him the chance to visit museums in such places as Kyrgyzstan and even the Hermitage in Moscow, Rohrs did not enjoy the long trips the consulting work required. He found a way to return to Nevada, accepting the position of dean and chief operating officer at the National Judicial College, a position he held for four years.

Then his administrative and legal skills brought him to the ethics commission post.

"We've come a long way in implementing the changes the legislature mandated for the ethics commission, but I didn't see myself doing this for another 10 or 15 years," Rohrs said.

"I was looking at the Department of Museums, Library and Arts Web site and saw they were looking for an administrator for the museum and history division. I was wishing I has some museum experience to show them.

"I had met (department director) Mike Hillerby, so I called him and ended up going though the whole application and interview process."

Rohrs said his first goal will be let the staffs of the state's museums and historical societies know that the division is supportive of them, that he welcomes their ideas and that he is very much a team player.

"Then we'll all be thinking about more ways to get people - Nevadans as well as visitors to our state - to come into the museums and historical societies to see what the state is all about," he said.

Rohrs and his wife, Georgia, live in Galena Forest Estates at the south end of Reno.

Georgia is a program analyst in the fiscal division of the Nevada Legislative Council Bureau.

Rohrs' stepdaughter, Jennifer, is a paralegal for a San Diego, Calif., law firm, but is also a filmmaker. She recently won an editing award in a New York City film competition for a film that juxtaposed like-named streets and similar buildings in New York and San Francisco, Rohrs said.

Son Jeffrey is an attorney who works for an Internet Web services company in Cleveland, Ohio, Rohrs said. Jeffrey and his wife, Jenny, are expecting their first child in December.

Son Matthew works for an independent film company based in Hollywood that has created music videos, including one for the Brian Setzer Orchestra and another that received considerable MTV air play, "Who Let the Dogs Out" by Baha Men.

While a new administrator is sought for the ethics office, commission legal counsel Nancy Lee Varnum will serve as interim administrator, Rohrs said. He said the ethics commission has a few housekeeping bill draft requests in for the 2001 Legislature.