A Fair Lady

Collins celebrates 77 years of county fair entries

Donna Collins—better known as DC—hasn’t missed entering something in the county fair for the last 77 years. If you’ve visited the Rio Blanco County Fair anytime in the last 30-plus years, you’ve seen DC’s name on various indoor exhibits and in the list of winners published in the newspaper. She didn’t even let cancer stop her. During a bout with lymphoma in the late ‘90s, she directed a helper to take some of her homemade canned goods in to exhibit.

Now 84 years old and a voluntary resident of the Walbridge Wing, DC didn’t miss the opportunity to participate in the 101st annual Rio Blanco County Fair last week, earning a few more blue ribbons to a legacy of fair participation that has set an example for her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and anyone else she can convince to turn in an entry.

Adopted and raised as an only child, DC grew up on the eastern plains between Limon and Burlington. At the age of 9 she joined the local 4-H sewing club and that year, 1945, submitted her first fair entry, a simple dress. At that time, all the sewing club members completed the same pattern for their fair projects. She started with the dress, then moved on to muffins, and bread.

“I was a state champion breadmaker in high school,” she said. She baked bread every day for 30 days, practicing and tweaking her technique to create the best shaped loaf with ideal texture, color and flavor.

A teacher for 35 years, DC majored in physical education and coached and taught high school and middle school. She said she especially loved the seventh graders, who “didn’t quite know who they were yet.”

She played AAU basketball, and went on to coach “all the sports.” She passed that competitive nature on to her family, raising four generations of “gym rats” and “fair rats” alongside her late husband Joe, who served as a Rio Blanco County commissioner for multiple terms.

“What makes me so proud is the family,” DC said. While she never competed in the livestock portion, her family members have, with great success.

Her great-grandchildren won buckles at this year’s fair in livestock competition. Great-granddaughter Cienna Rogers, daughter of Ben and Jamie Rogers, an incoming sixth grader, won the Round Robin competition. Starting in 2021, the Round Robin is a competition between the top showmen from certain species (small or large animal) who can show all of the species correctly. Cienna will represent Rio Blanco County at the 2022 State Fair Round Robin. Several other projects entered by DC’s great-grandchildren also qualified for state competition.

Asked how many ribbons she’s collected over the years, Collins said at one point she had a shoebox filled with ribbons, and eventually “only kept the purple ones” — the coveted championship ribbons. Since her move to the Walbridge Wing, she’s downsized, and now has charms made to represent the fair accomplishments of her great-grandchildren.

This year’s county fair has come to a close, but that just means it’s time for “the DC lecture” which she freely shares: “If we don’t take something to fair, we won’t have a fair.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: Full fair results are scheduled to be published next week. If you have pictures, or a fair-related story you’d like to share, please drop us a note via email to [email protected] or call 970-878-4017.

By NIKI TURNER – editor@editorht1885.com