J. L. "Dusty" Rhoades

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James Lewis Rhoades, usually known as J. L. "Dusty" Rhoades (January 8, 1899 - February 1978),^[1]was one of the founders of the American Quarter Horse Association, based in Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. He was the AQHA president in 1966 and again in 1974.^[2]The organization conducts its business through headquarters off Interstate 40 in Amarillo. There is also a Quarter Horse Museum. The horse was first bred in colonial Virginia.

Rhoades was the eldest of three brothers born on a ranch in Cheyenne County in eastern Colorado. In 1925, he joined the J.C. Penney Company in Boulder, Colorado, and was later transferred to Missouri, and then to Texas -- San Marcos (Hays County), Abilene (Taylor County), and, finally, Odessa (Ector County). He became involved in horse shows through the Abilene Chamber of Commerce. In 1938, he formed the Texas Palomino Association, which in 1940 became the AQHA, of which he was one of the first stockholders. In 1939, Rhoades worked to bring Quarter Horse racing to the Southwestern Exposition and Livestock Show in Fort Worth. Prior to his leaving Penney's in Odessa, Rhoades joined James "Jim" Key (1900-1974)^[1]to establish J. L. Rhoades and Associates, a land development company active during the Odessa petroleum boom years.^[3]

From 1951-1952, he was president of the Odessa Chamber of Commerce. ^[4]From 1959-1960, he was president of the Odessa Boy Scouts.^[5]

Rhoades was twice married. The former Earnestine Anderson bore the couple's only child in Cheyenne Wells, Colorado, a son, Dale Robert Rhoades, Sr. (July 15, 1921-September 4, 2004), a physician and civic leader in Crosbyton, the seat of Crosby County in west Texas near Lubbock. Earnestine died in 1936, when Dale, at fifteen, was in his senior year at Abilene High School.^[6]Dale graduated from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene and then the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. After Earnestine's death, Dusty wed Virginia Rhoades (July 26, 1898 - May 25, 1990),^[1]a horsewoman in her own right. Rhoades had two grandchildren, Dale Robert "Bob" Rhoades, Jr. (born ca. 1944),^[7] of Lubbock and Pamela Jane Rhoades Davis (born 1948) of Abilene, by Dale's first marriage to the former Ruth Boger (1920-2000).^[6]

In 1991, Rhoades was posthumously inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame.^[3]

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