Douglas Paul Sharples, 76, of Wakonda, SD, passed away September 24, 2021.
Doug was born August 18, 1945, in Red Oak, Iowa, to Thomas A. and Ruth Ann (Turner) Sharples. He lived the first year of his life in Hawthorne, California, while his father was in World War II. When his father returned in 1946, the family settled in Clinton, Iowa. In 1954, they moved to Atlantic, where his father taught at the high school. In 1956, the family moved into a home his father constructed on a plot of farmland on the edge of Griswold, his mother’s hometown. There, Doug enjoyed the family’s two dogs, playing in the creek that ran through the property, and riding horses with brother Tom. Doug attended 6th grade in Griswold, then commuted to Atlantic for his 7th through 11th grade years.
In the summer of 1962 after his junior year in high school, Doug attended the University of Iowa Drama Workshop, then headed directly to Simpson College in Indianola. Doug majored in Speech and Theatre. In the spring of 1964, he met the love of his life, Judi Wood, after casting her in a play he was directing. They were members of Warren M. Lee’s Black Hills Playhouse Company during the summers of 1964 and 1965. Doug and Judi married in Griswold on September 11, 1964.
After earning BA degrees from Simpson College, Doug and Judi enrolled in graduate school at the University of South Dakota. There, Doug took filmmaking, painting, and acting courses, earning his MA in Dramatic Arts and studying under Sanford Gray, Oscar Howe, and Wayne Knutson.
Doug and Judi moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1967, where Doug was employed by the University of Nebraska’s Motion Picture Unit as cameraman-editor. Doug shot the “Big Red” football games in Lincoln until early 1969, when Doug and Judi left for Los Angeles, where they lived for two years. They returned to South Dakota in 1971, settling in Wakonda where Doug started Cottonwood Productions, a motion picture company that produced dozens of award-winning commercials, documentaries, slide shows, and other multi-media productions for more than 30 years.
Doug won many awards, but one very special honor he received was in 1987 when he represented the United States at the first international scientific film festival in Beijing, China. Doug was the only US representative and served as an ambassador for the United States. Throughout his filmmaking career, Doug worked on three personal projects, including his crowning achievement, “Go Moan for Man” (1999), about the literary odyssey of Jack Kerouac.
In 2001, Doug started an old-time music hall in Gayville, SD. Doug’s love of music and his legacy continues on the Gayville Hall stage, where, to date, more than 400 shows have been presented.
In his life, Doug enjoyed spending time outside, reading, music, art, traveling, and introducing his four grandchildren to new experiences.
Doug is survived by his wife of 57 years, Judith; his only child, daughter Riva Jane; four grandchildren, Douglas (his namesake), Andrew, Rebekah, and Duncan Sharples-Schmidt, all of Wakonda, SD; his older brother Tom and wife Patty of Portland, Maine; and several cousins. He was proceeded in death by his grandparents, father, mother, an infant brother, and many aunts and uncles.
Doug’s interment will be in the Sharples family plot in the Griswold Cemetery, which overlooks the house his father built and the creek where he once played as a child. A graveside service will be held there on Friday, Oct. 8, at 1 p.m. A Celebration of Doug’s Life will be held at Gayville Hall in Gayville, SD, on Saturday, Oct. 9, at 2 p.m.
