Douglases to lead fair parade

Year after year, on Tuesday evenings at the Jackson County Fair, Rusty Douglas has been in the arena at the fair’s beef show, helping the kids with their steers and heifers and doing his best to keep the show running smoothly.

“I just do what I can,” Rusty says of his work with the beef show.

His wife, Pam, is out there as well, lending her support.

“When I watch Rusty out there with those kids, I’m so proud to be with a husband and a father who’s part of that,” Pam said of her husband’s work with beef and bucket calves at the fair.

The Douglases’ support of the fair throughout the years has led to them being selected as the grand marshals of this year’s Jackson County Fair Parade — an honor that they said had them taken aback, but nonetheless honored them.

Theirs is a story that began in Netawaka, where Rusty grew up on a cattle farm and participated in woodworking, cooking and other projects with the now-defunct Happy-Go-Luckies 4-H club, and also in central Nebraska, where Pam was involved with horses, clothing and baking projects with her 4-H club.

The two of them met at a Topeka dance in 1981 and hit it off quickly.

“We had a very short courtship,” said Pam, who noted their wedding in 1982 was just seven months after their meeting. The next five years saw the Douglases adding three children to their family, sons Joe and Chris and daughter Laura.

After moving to the Mayetta area, the growing Douglas family got involved with the Mayetta Mustangs 4-H club, starting with a bucket calf for son Chris and life lessons for all of their children.

“Chris got a grand prize one year, and then the next year, he didn’t, and he cried and he sat in the bleachers for a long time,” Pam said. “And when the boys did cattle, they had to buy them with their own money, and there would be some years when they didn’t make any money on them at the sale. But that’s life.”

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