Fort Worth Stock Show Syndicate\u2019s Junior Sale of Champions<\/a> at Watt Arena.<\/p>\nThis is no Mott\u2019s Five and Dime. Last year, the six-hour sale brought in more than $10 million for the youth exhibitors, including $375,000 for Alley Cat, the grand champion steer. Alley Cat was an American crossbred steer shown by Mattison Koepp of La Vernia.<\/p>\n
Lambert splits trilling duties with Bruce Miller. Steers, barrows, goats, and lambs, as well as the student exhibitors, get their time on stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe go up there and work for the kids. That\u2019s what we do. It\u2019s just very, very well run. The leadership at Fort Worth, ever since I\u2019ve been involved, has been as good as anywhere I\u2019ve ever worked \u2014 any group of people I\u2019ve ever been associated with. Fort Worth just kind of rises to the top in my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lambert, 63, was named for the patron saint of SMU football \u2014 Doak Walker, a Dallas native and star at SMU who won the Heisman Trophy in 1948. Walker is also a Pro Football Hall of Famer.<\/p>\n
Lambert\u2019s father, a Doak Walker devotee,\u00a0was a high school football coach. That profession is akin to career military people. Home is where the next job is.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were in one place as long as he was winning,\u201d Lambert jokes.<\/p>\n
For the family, that meant stints in Memphis, Texas \u2014 up U.S. 287 in the Panhandle \u2014 where Lambert was born; Childress; down to Lubbock; back north to Dumas; and, finally, a \u201cbig\u201d high school job in Dallas.<\/p>\n
Lambert played football at Duncanville, though, he jokes, he \u201cdidn\u2019t live up\u201d to his namesake. Lambert also did ag at Duncanville, then a mere rural suburb south of Dallas. Today, Duncanville is a football power. Then, its standouts were as likely to be members of the Future Farmers of America cohort. He went to Texas A&M to study animal science with the thought of becoming a veterinarian.<\/p>\n
Instead, after graduation, he went to work managing a ranch, which had a production sale and auction every year. The ranch hired an auction company to handle it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI kind of got fascinated with the auction business through that experience,\u201d Lambert says.<\/p>\n
Lambert estimates that he does about 300 auctions a year, including about 100 purebred cattle auctions. That includes conducting several in a day, such as Saturday. He was off to do two car auctions on Tuesday of this week.<\/p>\n
His very first one was an experience in crisis management.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was working for that same company that was left in a lurch by the Midwest blizzard. It happened again in Jackson, Mississippi, only shortly after Lambert had completed auctioneer\u2019s school. The event was the haltered heifer sale at the Dixie National Stock Show.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was not a full-blooded auctioneer by any means,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
However, he was going on stage, his boss told him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d been back sorting cattle, had [stuff] on my shirt, had a ball cap on. I didn\u2019t look at all like an auctioneer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not impressed was the sale chairman, Joe Frank Sanderson, the man behind poultry empire Sanderson Farms. Sanderson was also a prolific Brangus cattle breeder. When informed of the situation, Lambert says Sanderson looked at him with a wary and cold stare, like \u201cKing Saul looked at David.\u201d<\/p>\n
With a laugh, Lambert recalls his introduction by Sanderson: \u201cAs sale chairman, Joe Frank welcomed the crowd and introduced all the dignitaries and everything. And he goes, \u2018Well, if y\u2019all hadn\u2019t heard, our auctioneer didn\u2019t show up tonight. We\u2019re going to let Doak here do it.\u2019 And he said, \u2018Y\u2019all bear with us. We\u2019ll just muddle through this. Here\u2019s Doak.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Not exactly a vote of confidence for the rookie, but Lambert nailed it. The first consignment was Sanderson\u2019s, which went for $10,000 \u2014 \u201ca ton of money back then.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe perked up, like he thought, \u2018Well, I think this is going to be all right.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The experience was exhilarating, Lambert says. Everybody knew the fire he had been thrown into. Lambert has been chanting ever since that day some 40 years ago. He went out on his own in 1988.\u00a0In addition to farm, ranch, and livestock, Lambert Auction Company<\/a> does real estate auctions, personal property, and benefit fundraisers. He operates the company with his wife, Wendy.<\/p>\nBeing behind that microphone and feeling the rush of adrenaline of watching people get caught up in the bidding \u2014 and the end result \u2014 is something more than a mere thrill.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never done drugs,\u201d says Lambert, \u201cbut it\u2019s a rush that I would think would be similar to a narcotic. And it is addicting. You get through with one and you\u2019re kind of exhausted, and so you want to recuperate, but then you kind of can\u2019t wait to go do the next one in hopes that it\u2019s going to bring that same rush.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Doak Lambert\u2019s career in auctioneering was forged in a crunch. Actually, two. He was working for an auctioneering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":151404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[116,118,117,55002,2862,92],"class_list":{"0":"post-151403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-fort-worth","9":"tag-fort-worth-headlines","10":"tag-fort-worth-news","11":"tag-fort-worth-stock-show","12":"tag-john-henry","13":"tag-top-story"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}