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hen Jody Gray swings a leg over her 26- year-old sorrel mare Scotty standing ready near a green pasture here, it's obvious this womanims bom to the saddle.rAnd now Gray, chief executive officer of the El Dorado County Fair, is saddling up to present the popular annual event, set forJune 13 to 16.Putting on the fair is as much a passion for Gray as the horseback riding she has enjoyed since her youth, an enterprise that has garnered the personable Gray many silver and gold belt buckles, numerous saddles and bridles, a “barn foil of blankets” and other awards for her y|Qti(e«riaiiprowess.With the fair on the near horizon. Gray was kind enough to take ashort break from her executive duties to tell the Mountain Democrat a hit about the other side of Jody'Gray, an accomplished woman whoseluckily is harnessed just long enough to throw a stellar fair eachgr for the past 11 years so that residents and visitors alike can show their own accomplishments and celebrate those of others at theE! Dorado County Fair.ifh**Equine love• meAsked when it was that she realized she possessed such a profoundlove of horses Gray said simplySBpH2.’* ■‘ , K‘ : t e .“When 1 was very young. I had some girlfriends who had horses |;Was hooked from the start,” said Gray. “Every S3 I could raiseStateline Stables {in Tahoe)'As she expertly placed an engraved saddle that she won in 1997 in a team penning competition in Utah on the hack of the patient Scotty, Gliy explained that she grew up in South Lake Tahoe then located for a while in Utah. There she worked at a parks and recreation job.From there she became manager of the county fair in Farmington, Utah, a position she held for four years, and eventually would comeback to El Dorado Countv to take the reins of the local fair.It has been a bit of a bumpy trail for Gray, she readily concedes, but like a motto posted above a collection of silver buckles at her home in Auburn Lake Trails states: “If you climb in the saddle, be readv for the ride.”Taking the reinsWhen Gray first became CEO of the lair in El Dorado County, there were critics who could 'be, at times, harsh toward the then-39-year-old woman who had fresh (sometimes misunderstood or not welcomed) ideas about how to throw a fair._ fcc-.....«• -14 C *3*0%
Newspaper Details
Village Life
Placerville, California, US
Wed, Jun 12, 2013
Page 59
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
CA, USA 24 Jan 2022
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