Phillips is helping hometown

John “JT” Phillips has returned to his hometown — again — and has stepped in to fill a need in the community he holds dear.
“I feel like I’ve come home,” Phillips said.
Phillips moved back to Dunkirk last year and recently took over the duties of clerk-treasurer after Phonnie Kesler resigned from the position.
Even though he is retired, Phillips, 68, was asked to apply for the position and was chosen by a Democrat caucus to fill it until the end of the year.
“I was asked if I would be interested,” Phillips said. “I felt like it would be the right thing to do.”
Phillips is a 1964 graduate of Dunkirk High School, where he served as vice president of his class and performed in theatre productions. He worked as a soda jerk at Rawlings Drug Store during his high school years.
He served in the Naval Reserves from 1965 to 1967 and met Kathryn “Kathie” Bahns, of Ventura, California, during that time. They were married after he left the reserves, and they have spent their lives bouncing back and forth from Jay County to Southern California, where her family resides.  
Phillips feels his years of banking experience have given him the qualifications to do the job. He first began working part-time at Merchants National Bank when he was attending Ball State University after he returned to Dunkirk with Kathie.
He also managed the Pennville office and Northgate branch of Citizens Bank of Portland in the early 1980s, was manager of the National Bank of Catalina on Catalina Island in California, was vice president of the senior administrative office for the San Fernando Valley region of Metro Bank   and worked at City National Bank of Beverly Hills, where he was district operations officer for five of its branches in southern California.
While at the Beverly Hills bank, he notarized actor Rock Hudson’s signature when Hudson bought a home for his mother. Moe Howard of The Three Stooges was a regular customer.
“It was fun,” Phillips said.
Phillips also had business contact with radio and television personality Dick Clark, General Omar Bradley, singer and pianist Buddy Greco and sister actresses Eva and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

In addition to banking, Phillips has ventured down many other career paths.
“I’ve had a very colorful career,” said Phillips.
While living in Indiana, he worked for Jay County Prosecutor Robert Clamme as an investigator in the late 1970s. He graduated from the Indiana Law Enforcement Academy and was chief deputy under then-Jay County Sheriff Bill Upp, and his family lived in the sheriff’s quarters at Jay County Jail where Kathie was the cook. He later served as Redkey Town Marshal in the early 1980s before returning to the west coast in 1984.
Phillips also started an Arizona real estate company, which his sister now owns, and ran his own real estate company and auction house in Washington. He had helped Karl Ed Orr, a former real estate dealer and auctioneer in Dunkirk, on his farm.
“He was my auctioneering mentor,” Phillips said.  
After getting his license, and was an auctioneer in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Washington.
While living in Deming, New Mexico, he was economic development director and Main Street manager, restored a 5,000-square foot Rexall Drug Store and opened an incubator for small businesses.   
He served on the board of the Jay School Corporation board for nearly four years, from 1980 to 1984.
Of all his career choices, Phillips said auctioneering was the most enjoyable.  
“I’ve tried a number of different things and been successful at a number,” said Phillips. “And some weren’t near as successful as what I would like to have seen. But everything I’ve done basically has been rewarding in some form or fashion.”
Phillips has his private pilot’s license and said the only things left on his bucket list are learning to play “Chattanooga Choo Choo” on the piano, even though he doesn’t play the instrument, and learning to speak another language. He does own a player piano and more than 400 rolls to go with it.
Even though John and Kathie’s four children are scattered in Southern California, New Mexico and New York, they were unanimous in supporting their parents’ move back to Dunkirk.
“This is one of the few moves, that I can remember in our illustrious career, that all four have signed off on,” said Phillips. “They all think it was the right move.
“We like being back. Our autumn leaves are falling in our life, and we’re still able to rake ’em up.”