Cattlemen’s Days committee buys swine, donates it to family

GUNNISON, Colo. – The foundation of every county fair is giving back to the community, especially youth.

It’s no different for Cattlemen’s Days, which has been celebrating 125 years for a week and a half. It’s an opportunity for children to showcase their hard work and fortitude as they carry on an agriculture-based legacy. In the process, it teaches the importance of helping out and caring for others.

The volunteers with the Cattlemen’s Days committee are taking it up another level this year, the first in which the beneficiary of the group’s giving nature is pediatric cancer through the Golden Circle of Champions.

The proof came during Saturday afternoon’s Junior Livestock Auction, when the committee purchased a swine from Grady Buckhanan for $4,230, then donated the animal to the family of 15-year-old Wesley Sudderth, who is undergoing treatments for leukemia at Children’s Hospital of Colorado in Aurora.

“He is one of five children in his family,” said Karla Rundell, the second vice president of the Cattlemen’s Days Committee. “Essentially, he was playing basketball one week and diagnosed with cancer the very next week. The fact that his family’s supporting three kids in college, another one in high school, plus Wesley, it really stuck to us.”

The Sudderths can use the animal however they wish.

“It can feed their family and take care of what they need to take care of,” Rundell said. “Our kids are literally our future, and when a child goes through cancer, it’s the whole family that goes through cancer; life takes place outside of cancer. Groceries still have to be bought. Rent and utilities still have to be paid. It’s a whole-family battle.”

Wesley started feeling ill earlier this year. He felt like he had a bad cold, but it lingered for weeks. When he finally got it checked out, doctors found that the teen was severely anemic. He was flown to Aurora and diagnosed with leukemia in February.

“He threw the fastball right away … 100 miles an hour,” said David Sudderth, Wesley’s father. “We were afraid. We were uncertain of what would happen. We were parents who, up to that point, had felt capable of handling most of the things, but we felt helpless.”

That’s what happens when a family is affected by cancer. First, it’s the unpredictable diagnosis, then the mad scramble to get everything figured out. There were logistics that had never been foreseen. There were three-and-a-half-hour, one-way trips to Aurora.

It was chaos.

“They give you what they call a road map, and it changes constantly,” David Sudderth said. “You think you have the ability to do this or that for your other children or for work or for your spouse or for yourself, and those, inevitably don’t work out. It’s incredibly stressful and difficult for Wesley, because he is someone who loves order and routine and predictability, and he’ll have none of that for basically two years.

“It’s really tough.”

But so is Wesley. He’s felt the illness, the pain, the side effects, the uncertainty of it all, and he’s just 15 years old. To look at him, though, he stands tall in his own skin. He understands the challenges, maybe better than many in his situation. But there’s no doubt about it, fear is part of his life, too. One can look at fear and cower, or one can look at it and attack. Wesley Sudderth is doing the latter.

“I instantly thought of my grandpa, who passed away from skin cancer in December,” he said. “I was like, ‘OK, well, leukemia isn’t that bad,’ but I just always thought of myself as someone who was always going to see people that had cancer and not actually have it myself. I just froze. I didn’t really know what to think in that moment.”

He’s gone through series of steroids and “Probably a dozen different types of chemos.” The plan right now is to continue weekly treatments through February, then transition to monthly appointments. The regimen will continue until 2027. It’s still early in the process.

Because every step of this is filled with conflicts and emotions and life-changing moments for all seven members of the family, folks in the Gunnison community have stepped up to offer a hand. That’s where the Cattlemen’s Days committee and Golden Circle of Champions has entered the show ring.

“It goes back a lot more than just being a member of the Cattlemen’s Days committee,” said Tyler Hanson, the group’s first vice president. “I had a sister that had a swimming accident, and this community stepped up and helped us when my sister was in need. This is a way for me to help give back to this community. I’m just so fortunate to be part of an organization that can put the funds together to help a family in need again.

“I understand the financial burden that another family goes through. It’s important to me that they get some relief in any way they can.”

It’s a long-lasting impact. The swine the committee purchased Saturday afternoon will go a lot further to the Sudderths than the potential meat alone.

“We felt like while this was really hard, we’ve got this,” David Sudderth said. “We came to realize that there’s a reason groups like this exist, and we’re really grateful, because we’re always going in different directions with this. You have to split your family apart. It’s very expensive. It’s very difficult for everyone emotionally, psychologically. It’s not just the support from groups like Golden Circle; it’s that sense of the community coming together through those groups and in other ways that you realize you’re not alone.

“You’re part of something bigger, and there’s a lot of strength you can get from that.”