The following article written by Nat Worman appeared in the Friday St. Albans Messenger Supplement on Franklin County Field Days, July 28, 2006:
Field Days patriarch remains active at 84
FAIRFAX - At 84, dairyman Doug Webb’s head is as full of plans for today as it is for memories of yesterday.
Ever since he has had anything to do with it, he has spoken of those who put on the Franklin County Field Days - August 3, 4, 5 ,6 - as "we." He's not looking back and saying "they." He lives in the present and is still as much Mr. Franklin County Dairyman as any of his peers.
But therein lies a big surprise,
Webb is still a member of the Fairfax Selectboard after 44 years and the board of civil authority for he doesn't know how long. He's lost track of the number of boards he served on but knows for sure he's been involved in Franklin County Field Days from the very beginning.
He was born just up the road and bought this farm, where he talks with a visitor, in 1946. A few acres of it lay across the line in Fairfield. When he drove over there to register the deed, the young woman at the town clerk's office who helped him was Nellie Burnor. Two years later, they were married. Doug looks up with a smile, and says, "You never know what's going to happen to you, do you?"
Doug Webb, semi-retired and grandfather to four, is surprised his life has gone so well.
He seems mystified by his good fortune and time again, he shrugs off any hint that just maybe he had something to do with it.
Slowly, word by word and short sentence by short sentence, he reveals that there were three people who in his youth set him on the right track: Samuel and Bertha Brooke Webb, his mother and father, and Dean Rowe, the man who came to town in Doug's freshman year to take over as principal of Fairfax Academy High School (BFA).
His parents never punished but expected him to behave. Dean Rowe made him see that his school mattered.
"He came to be principal my freshman year. And it made all the difference in the world. People do make a difference. ... He came there and there was discipline - no problem. Some of the boys were 21 years old for crying out loud. They just stayed there and didn't study and got away with it. Some of them, he called into the office and said, 'Look, you're going to graduate, you're going to behave, so you might as well buckle down and do it.'
"I thought I was just going there for a good time. But this is the way people have a tremendous affect on you, and you don't even know it."
And then Doug was called to Dean Rowe's office. "I was just frightened to death. 1 never saw him lay a hand on a kid. But boy, you behaved, I'll tell you."
Samuel and Bertha Brooke Webb were life models. Frugal and hardworking, Bertha made the house snug and well ordered. Samuel milked the 15 cows, and together they grew vegetables, strawberries and raspber,ries to sell at market.
They raised four children 'that way, William, Ivy, Doug, and Frena.
J. Douglas Webb's own history did not begin in Vermont at all. It began in England, when Bertha Brooke and Samuel Webb married. William and Ivy were born there, too.
Born here in Fairfax on May 20, 1922, Doug is a first-generation American. His parents' hard work and frugality rubbed off on him. So did his father's belief in community service. Nothing stood in the way of that, not even the greeting he got at one of his early Fairfax town meetings. A fellow townsman stood up and told Samuel: "Sit down, alien!"
Remembering his childhood, Doug said. "We got by; they didn't throw anything away either," Doug said. "We never saw a day we didn't have enough to eat. Sometime it was pretty tough going, you know. But - that's the way you get by; I don't think people today would get by like that, because they aren't brought up that way. Even my kids, they weren't brought up that way; I hope they never have to go through those hard times."
Though communicants of the Church of England, the family attended the local Baptist Church, now the United Church of Fairfax, which Doug still attends. Unused beneath the podium is the baptismal font. Doug was one of the last class to be baptized there, dipped into the water by a blind minister.
It would be hard to find any Franklin County dairyman as much a part of the community as James Douglas Webb, none whose life work stands as clearly for the destiny of dairying here. He, after all, is one of a handful who, right here in Vermont, turned separate dairy groups throughout the country into one powerful voice -the American Dairy Association - into a single powerful voice that spends over $70 million a year on milk promotion.
He is just as central in the history of Franklin County Field Days.
'' Don McFeeters was county agent then," Doug says from his corner chair in the front room of the house on the 800-acre, 300-cow Maplewood Dairy he and his sons run.
"Don had this idea to bring agriculture to the forefront in Franklin County. He had this work-study student to do that. But the work-study student didn't pan out. And Don called me and the rest is history."
As is his way, he gives credit where credit is due.
"Don worked hard to promote agriculture and the Field Days and that's how it started," Doug said.
"Our first Field Days was held up at the Fairfax Riding and Driving Club. We had a National Guard tent. We didn't know what we were doing; we had a terrible time trying to put it up because we didn't know how. The wind was blowing; it took us all over the field, of course.
"Finally the Guard guys came out and said this is how you do it. We might have had two Field Days there. We didn't need a hundred acres then. It worked out fine. We didn't know how big it was going to get. A lot of people put a lot of work into it. A lot of people have to do that in order for these things to work.
Eventually Field Days moved to Richard Brouillette's farm in Sheldon. "We had a terrible time that year. It rained. Oh, gosh, we had the tractor pull all the cars," Doug remembered.
"Of course, we've branched out a lot now," Doug added. "We're going to have quite a show this year. We have one of the best sites in the state as far as a fair or Field Days, because it can rain (and there's no trouble with parking cars). ... Dennis Kane and I went down and talked with the Department of Transportation about using that (the Franklin County State Airport site).
"They were very gracious about it. It was just an open cornfield; they were getting a dollar a year from the guy who was renting it."
All this is said in a voice of calm inevitability, the voice, like the man, dependable and durable, alive, living in the present, service to the community still uppermost.
Beneath it, though, there is the strength of Doug Webb's spiritual life. His visitor, about to leave, asks him about his wife, Nellie, who died three years ago, a victim of Alzheimer's disease.
"Will you see Nellie again?"
"Oh, I expect so," he says without hesitating. "On the other side. I expect so. I think we got to believe that. I don't think there's any question about it. It all comes full circle."
And then he sees his visitor off with a typical Doug Webb remark: "I hope I've been helpful."
The full interview with J. Douglas Webb is being broadcast on Northwest Public Access (channel 15 on Adelphia cable) on Friday at 1 p.m. and Saturday at 2 p.m. The interview repeats as Franklin County Field Days roars on the following Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.[/b]
