Denton hangs mic up after 40 years

An individual who gave of himself to the expedient, efficient and safe resolution of countless emergencies in Adair County signed off of the emergency communications airwaves for the final time recently.

Adair County dispatcher and jailer Denny Denton began Jan. 30, 1985 and worked under four county sheriffs.

“The changes that occurred over the last 40 years in dispatching are nothing short of amazing,” Sheriff Jeff Vandewater said in a recent Facebook post about Denton. “In 1985, there were no cell phones, registration information for in-county vehicles was accessed via index cards kept in dispatch and 911 from your home phone would not be a thing for almost 15 more years.”

Denton said for a story in 2019 that the best way to describe his job is making sure he was communicating with emergency responders in such a way that they were in the best position possible to be successful in what they were trying to do and to go home safely at the end of their shift to their family.

That year, the sheriff’s office had four high-speed chases in a 12-day span. Events like those happen, and communications personnel are key to responders handling the situation well.

“When I started, we just had one monitor [in the dispatch center] and the rest was paper. We used a typewriter for our call logging,” Denton said. Now there are several monitors dispatchers use with various functions for each. “It was more time-consuming than it is now.”

The new jail opened in 2012 and has state-of-the-art security features so dispatchers are the only ones who can unlock many of the doors.

“I can see part of the outside world, but the cameras are mainly to watch prisoners. They can only go as far as me opening doors for them. The only door that I don’t control is the very front door,” he said. “If they want to go to the rec room I’ve gotta unlock the door for them to do so.”

Hired by former Sheriff Fred Skellenger, Denton became a dispatcher simply because he needed a job. He had very little training in contrast to what is given to new dispatchers today. He worked overnights for 28 years before switching to days the last 12 years of his career.

“I was on in two weeks and it scared the daylights out of me,” Denton said of his training. “The training’s a lot harder now because there’s a lot more to do now. It can be intimidating, but once you realize the technology works for you — that you’re not at the mercy of it, it’s at the mercy of you — you should be OK. You do your job, go home and make sure the [responders] go home safe. That’s what I’ve told anyone I’ve trained, that your number one priority is officer safety.”

Vandewater said the void left by Denton’s retirement from the sheriff’s office will be a hard one to fill with someone else.

“Denny worked with hundreds of different officers, deputies and troopers. He probably saw into the thousands of people come through the jail and took tens of thousands of phone calls. It really is hard to grasp the sheer numbers,” Vandewater said. “We appreciate his loyalty, dedication and selflessness throughout his years of service, with many of his years working the lonely midnight shift. We cannot express enough thanks.”