Community looks to help seniors who couldn’t have final show
This weekend should have been a long-awaited event for youth across the county when the Milam County Junior Livestock Show kicked off today.
But, due to restrictions in place due to stopping the spread of COVID-19 the annual event was cancelled.
That hasn’t stopped the community from coming together to help salvage some sort of normalcy for the seniors who are missing their final chance to show the animals.
“When the show canceled the last thing I was thinking about was whether or not we got entry fees back,” show mom Julie Eason said. “In fact, I never thought about the entry fee at all. I am more concerned over the number of kids that didn’t get to show off their hard work and will get no return on the feed they have put into their projects.”
Eason said she was talking with Clint and Christi Butler from Milano and Clint asked her what she was planning to do about the entry fees.
“I told him I hadn’t really thought about it but I didn’t want it back and would rather MCJLS put it toward expenses that have already been paid,” she said. “He said they had thought if enough people donated their entry fees back maybe they could split it amongst the seniors, and I thought that was brilliant.”
Eason said when Sandra Waiser, MCJLS board member, contacted her to see if they would be putting their animal on the re-sale truck she also mentioned they would be working on checks to return entry fees and clean up fees.
“I told her I did not want mine back no matter what, and she had already spoken with the Butlers about the idea of helping out a senior,” Eason said. “I told her it would be awesome and I would do my best to spread the word and hopefully if enough people do that they can get a little bit of something.”
Waiser said there are 12 seniors that were to exhibit projects at the show this year.
“We have gotten a lot of donations of fees for senior scholarships and just back to the show to help us keep running,” Waiser said. “It turned out to be really neat that people are willing to help with that.”
Waiser said if you would like to donate your fees from the MCJLS for senior scholarships or make a donation to the show to help with the cost of other things you can email her at swaiser@swbell.net
The MCJLS still has raffle tickets for sale. The drawing has been postponed until an event scheduled for Memorial Day weekend that will hopefully go on as planned. If you would like to support the show by buying raffle tickets you can contact any MCJLS board member or look up the MCJLS on Facebook.