If you know Doug Cater—and almost everyone does--you know how hard it is to turn him speechless.
We did our best, reaching him on what turned out to be his 81st birthday to let him know he is our 2023 Times-Journal Star.
It worked.
“I don’t know what to say,” Mr. Cater said.
But it turns out, he did.
For all of his years with the Cobleskill Fair, a connection that goes back to when he was 13, Doug Cater is this year’s Star.
“I just loved fairs my entire life,” Mr. Cater said,.
“When I was 12, 13, 14, I had a paper route for the Gazette. There was a TV show I was obsessed with—‘Circus Boy,’ and I used to daydream about running away to join the circus. Circuses, fairs…I was just intrigued with it all.”
Mr. Cater is a 1961 graduate of Schoharie Central School, where he was FFA president and, not surprisingly, a Public Speaking winner with his “The Voice is My Business,” a speech on the farm auctioneer even before he was manning the mic.
He spent summers on his grandfather’s farm, helping with the horses, and still remembers coming to the Cobleskill Fair for Children’s Day, a Friday when every school in Schoharie County was closed.
“When I was 13, my Dad let me skip school so I could work for the carnival [the King Reid Shows] , making $5 a day—which was a lot for a kid,” he remembered.
The next summer, he was back at the Fair, running the boat rides, making $6 a day, but by 17, he’d been bitten by the harness racing bug, and racing not only at the Cobleskill Fair—he still has some of those race programs--but at Saratoga.
When he was 21, Mr. Cater went to auctioneering school in Mason City, Iowa, a two-week course that cost $175; 60 years later, he’s still auctioneering, mostly estate sales, but charity events as well.
He’s also spent many of those same years “calling” harness races up and down the East Coast, but the two don’t have as much in common as it might seem.
“In harness racing, you have to know the terminology, the history of the horses,” he said. “You have to have an idea of what might happen next. It’s almost like calling baseball.”
Mr. Cater was still just in his 20s when all of those interests started coming together and he put on his first fair of sorts, renting the Fairgrounds for a July 4th event with pony racing, music—Skeeter Davis—concessions. “And then I booked fireworks,” he said, laughing at the memory. “I didn’t know you needed a permit.”
The event was so successful, the following 4th the Fair Board wouldn’t rent the grounds to him; instead, they staged an event of their own.
It was also about that time that he began serving as superintendent of the pony and horse shows; in 1976, he was asked to run for a seat on the Fair Board, and he’s been there ever since.
Mr. Cater served as Fair Board president from 1980-85 and again from 2004 to the present—more terms than anyone else in the history of county fairs.
“Being in the fair business all these years, you just meet so many wonderful people,” he said.
“From the carnival world, the circus world, the harness racing world.”
It’s also where he met his wife, Joan, back in 1971, on a blind date. They’ll celebrate their 53rd anniversary Tuesday.
“The auctions, the Fair, she loves it all as much as I do,” he said.

WHO ELSE WAS NOMINATED? MORE ABOUT DOUG INSIDE.