Vinita’s Jordon Shults won breed champion at the Inter-State Fair in Coffeyville in 2017 with the help of fellow classmate Faith Swart-Woolman. Faith, who is a year older than Jordon, has helped him shown livestock and the two have bonded through the activity. Photo by Sandy Shults.
A very special boy in Vinita is showing livestock at the Inter-State Fair in Coffeyville, thanks to a little help from his friends.
Jordon Shults, a seventeen-year-old youth from Vinita, Oklahoma, who has Down Syndrome, has been showing sheep, goats and pigs at the fair in Coffeyville.
It all started when Jordon’s younger sister, A.J., began showing livestock. Their grandparents decided if she was going to do it, Jordon might be interested, too.
They purchased sheep from Brad and Cristin Bible, whose niece, Faith Swart-Woolman, knew Jordon from Vinita High School, where they both attended. She wondered if he’d like a little assistance.
So she approached him. “We had a connection through livestock and school,” she said, “and it started getting stronger.”
With help from Swart-Woolman and other livestock exhibitors, Jordon has shown animals at the Craig County Fair (Vinita, Okla.) and at the Inter-State Fair in Coffeyville. He walks his animals into the show ring, and Faith, and his sister AJ, who also helps, help him brace the animal, so it is standing correctly. Jordon does most of the work, though. “I stand by, for encouraging and supporting” him, Faith said.
Faith Swart-Woolman and Jordon Shults attend the Vinita High School 2018 prom, with Sandy Shults on the left. Faith and Jordon are good friends, in part because of showing livestock together. Photo courtesy Faith Swart-Woolman.
Jordon and Faith are close friends. This spring, at the Craig County spring livestock show, she surprised him in the show ring with a show banner, asking him to prom over the microphone. “He knew exactly what I said,” she said, “and he said, yes, and started chuckling.”
It is important to Faith to help Jordon. “I just feel like there’s always a place you can make a change in somebody’s life,” she said. “I want Jordon to feel included, like he’s like everybody else, and that nothing can hold him back. I want him to feel like somebody is by his side, to make him feel just as important. I feel like that’s me doing my duty in the world.”
This fall, Faith will attend Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College in Miami to earn her registered nursing degree. Then she will transfer to Oklahoma Wesleyan University to get a bachelor of science in nursing degree. She’ll miss her friend, but when she’s home, she’ll stop in to see him and his animals. She attended, along with Sandy, his grandmother, Special Olympics in Stillwater, Okla. with Jordon and plans on going again next year.
Sandy believes showing livestock has benefited Jordon. It has taught him responsibility, “to take care of something other than himself,” she said. He spends countless hours with his animals. “When he first started, he would take his Ipad, sit in the pen with the goats, and watch videos together. He sits and talks to them,” she said. “He just loves his animals.”
In addition to Faith and his sister A.J., Keeton Ornder also helps him with his pigs.
The livestock shows at the 110th annual Inter-State Fair in Coffeyville run August 14-17. Grandstand events are scheduled each night of the fair, August 13-18. A full schedule can be found atwww.FairAndRodeo.com. Tickets to the grandstand events can be purchased online, through the Coffeyville Area Chamber of Commerce, and at the gate.
