McKinney retires after 24 years

The long legacy of McKinney men working maintenance at the Palouse school district has come to a close after 50 years of service.

Rick McKinney retired as maintenance supervisor from the district in February after 24 years. He came on the job in 1986, 11 years after his father, Leonard McKinney, retired having served 26 years in the position.

“I worked sometimes for dad. You painted this, you mowed that, you got ready for football season,” McKinney said.

McKinney, who lives two blocks from the school with his wife Jill, said he has seen a myriad of messes in his time.

“Between him and his dad, there was no one who knew more about the school,” Jill said.

McKinney can recall the time a boiler broke upstairs in the winter. With temperatures at 15 below and a steady wind blowing, the toilets upstairs had frozen.

McKinney said it wasn’t just cleaning he worked on. As supervisor he was often responsible for all the fix-it problems at the school. So removing wasp nests on the playground, putting up the flag, working on the water lines and opening stuck lockers could all be part of a day’s work, he said. Even during the night or on weekends, he was always on call, he said.

But it was working with the students year after year that was his favorite part of the job.

“Those kids, in whatever funny way, looked up to me,” he said.

“He had a really unique relationship with those kids, ” Jill added.

Rick himself graduated from Palouse High in 1967, so he knew many of the parents of the students at the district. Day after day, he enjoyed giving the youngsters candy or just having a good laugh with them.

“I got a lot of history with the kids- little kids, big kids- all the kids,” he said.

After high school, Rick worked odd jobs in the area until 1978, when he was hired as a bus driver for the district. For eight years, he drove the school bus. When the maintenance supervisor position opened in 1986, he was hired on.

He and Jill ran the Harvest Moon restaurant in town for three years.

Married in 1980, they raised two daughters, Sunrise and Terra. They graduated from Palouse in the 1990s.