![\"A](\"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/mules003-1024x673.jpg\")
Dailey and Bradley interviewed the men and observed the mules as they plowed the earth, moved timber to saw mill trucks and performed their \u201ccivilized\u201d version at the Missouri State Fair.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As exhibit coordinators Jim Curley and David Rees wrote in the first exhibit\u2019s informational panels, \u201cWe learn from these stubborn, gentle, persistent creatures, and the men and women devoted to them. It is a beautiful partnership of man and beast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cToo few people understand the Missouri Mule, a beast of burden in peace and war. They worked farms, forests and mines, yet never shed a reputation for stubborn-ness, even cantankerousness. Those who knew them tell a better story: Mules are intelligent, hardworking, agile, quick to learn, dependable \u2013 and wiser than horses.” The men who work with the mules say “‘You must be smarter than a mule to work a mule.’ They admit mules have strong personalities and sense of preservation. Mules won’t do dumb things asked by unwise masters.”<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"A](\"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/mules005-684x1024.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nDuane\u2019s life was a history lesson of the early rural Missouri years and beyond…<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been a Missourian all my life, and I\u2019m a show-me boy,\u201d said octogenarian Duane Dailey in September 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was born in South Lineville, Missouri (Lineville is north, across the Iowa state border). His life in the remote small town, and then on Dailey\u2019s Acres, a one-section (640 acre) farm, provided a strong allegiance to an agricultural life.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"A](\"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/mules001-1024x689.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cGrowing up, we raised all of our food. Dad put me to work right off the bat with chores; on the farm there are no sick days. We had two milk cows so we had a lot of milk; I churned butter.\u201d The family had vegetable gardens, canning the harvest, and raised beef cattle and hogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen we went grocery shopping we bought flour, sugar and salt, and the rest of the food we grew ourselves.\u201d Life was straightforward hard work. \u201cWe didn\u2019t have electricity and so we did it all by hand. I remember when the REA came through,\u201d bringing electricity to rural areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cA farmer friend became an electrician and put in wires in the house, and we had one light bulb in the center of each room and one electrical outlet.\u201d The Rural Electrification Act (REA) was enacted in 1936 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of the New Deal, bringing electricity to Missouri\u2019s rural areas for the first time.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"A](\"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/mules002-1024x678.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nWith a high school English teacher\u2019s encouragement, he went to the University of Missouri. \u201cI wanted to go to the School of Journalism and found out there was agricultural journalism and said, \u2018that\u2019s me.\u2019 I think I was in arts and science for one day and then moved to the ag journalism program.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Upon graduation he fulfilled his ROTC commitment by joining the Army as a second lieutenant and providing artillery training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma, which is why, \u201cI\u2019ve got artillery ears,\u201d he says, and has some difficulty hearing normal and high frequency sounds. Two years of this duty was enough for him. \u201cI was saying, get me out of here, get me out of here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As he looked for a job as an agricultural reporter, his lifelong ambition, the University of Missouri made him an offer too tempting to pass up \u2013 to become the 4-H editor for MU Extension while working on a master\u2019s degree combining journalism and extension education.<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"A](\"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/mules004-1024x660.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\u201cThen the real life changing thing happened early on.\u201d His boss, \u201cDick Lee allowed me to do about anything I wanted,\u201d to widen his communication skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Duane signed up for the 1961 Missouri Photo Workshop in Cape Girardeau \u2013 MPW.13. Eventually he would create a complementary Agricultural Editors Photo School. And then in 1986 he and Bill Kuykendall inherited the reins to the Missouri Photo Workshop and directed it for 15 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He continued to participate in an \u201cemeritus\u201d role in the workshop, writing columns for The Rangefinder, counseling students and quietly providing leadership for 37 workshops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Duane remained an active writer and photographer of agricultural issues until his death in March 2020. He combined those two talents for 50 years. His mantra was, \u201c Keep doing it, keep doing it.\u201d He was relied on as an accurate and insightful reporter by many farmers. \u201cMy job all these years has been as a translator \u2013 I translate bureaucratic blarney into farmer talk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
![\"A](\"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/DuaneMugForTakeAway.jpg\")
<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nDuane Dailey’s Missouri Men and Mules will be on display at the McDougall Gallery in Lee Hills Hall through October 2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Duane Dailey \u2013 In Memoriam By David Rees The Mule Project Working with Melvin Bradley, a University of Missouri professor of animal science from 1948 to 1990, Duane spent years photographing Missouri mules and their owners. This work, created mostly in 1982-83, was exhibited before he joined forces with the Angus and Betty McDougall Center […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-exhibit","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":974,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629\/revisions\/974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/mcdougallcenter.missouri.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}