Beyond Main - Stories Untold

Written by Jennifer Cohron

Beyond Main is a new series from Jasper Main Street

that shares the untold stories about the people in and around Downtown Jasper.

January 23, 2023

Carol Downs, Dee O’Mary and Susie Vann are board members of the Walker County Humane Society. Downs is an accountant at Downs & Associates. O’Mary is a pharmacist at Walker Baptist Medical Center. Vann is a secretary at Jackson, Fikes & Brakefield.

Friends don’t ask friends to take care of 88 cats on short notice – unless those friends are volunteers of the Walker County Humane Society.

Carol Downs, Susie Vann and Dee O’Mary dedicate countless hours each year to animal rescue as board members of the Walker County Humane Society.

It was Vann who helped capture the 88 cats and O’Mary and her husband, Jasper Mayor David O’Mary, who housed them in a barn on their property until new homes could be found.

Downs has served on the board since the Walker County Humane Society was formed in 1979. No local animal shelter existed at that time, and it was commonplace for inhumane methods to be used to control the stray animal population.

“We heard enough horror stories, and we wanted that to stop,” said Downs, the only founding board member who is still active in the work of the Walker County Humane Society.

Today, the group’s focus is on operating a year-round, low-cost spay and neuter program that assists an average of 700 pet owners each year as well as rescuing stray, abused or neglected animals in cooperation with local law enforcement. (It does not operate a shelter or adopt animals to the public.)

“You can get overwhelmed with it, but then you think about all of the ones who need help. In that sense, it’s almost like an addiction. It’s something I can’t stop,” said O’Mary, who joined the board approximately six years ago.

O’Mary became involved after she reached out to Vann when a stray dog wandered up in her mother’s yard. The dog, christened Big Man, found a new home, and O’Mary found a calling providing a foster home in her barn for cats that have been rescued.

Instead of kitty litter, O’Mary keeps costs down by using scrap paper that Downs feeds into the commercial shredder at Downs & Associates and then bags for her.

Downs, the nonprofit’s treasurer, also completes the grant paperwork for the funding that the Walker County Humane Society relies on to operate. Major funding sources include the Walker Area Community Foundation, the Remy Fund for Pets and Animals and the Holle Family Foundation.

“We can call on the Walker Area Community Foundation not only on an annual basis but also in emergency situations. We can’t thank them enough,” Downs said.

Other board members are Jeremiah Alexander, Sam Murphy, Phil Green, Amber Stockman, Deb Hatfield, Megan Colburn, and Joan Thornton.

Though dogs and cats make up the bulk of the rescues, Humane Society volunteers have also saved horses, snakes and other animals.

Recently, Vann was called out on a weekend to a home where former tenants had abandoned multiple dogs and cats as well as several snakes and a bearded dragon.

“I don’t know how many times I have been called out in the middle of the night where someone has been pulled over for a DUI and they have an animal of some sort with them – cat, dog, snake, rabbit. That person is going to jail, so the officer has to do something with the animals,” Vann said.

Vann has volunteered with the Walker County Humane Society since its inception and has been on the board since the 1980s. Her husband, Jimmie, is a retired Jasper police officer who now works as the animal abuse investigator for the Walker County Sheriff’s Office.

Though the hours are long and the need is seemingly endless, Vann and the others stick with their work because of animals like Jughead.

Vann, O’Mary and Vann’s sister, Joan Thornton, helped rescue the lab mix in 2018 after he had wandered around Empire for over two weeks with a plastic container stuck on his head. Today, the dog is called Jackson, and he is part of a happy, loving home.

“For me, it’s a God thing. I think this is what He wants me to do. He gave them to us, and He loves us, so we’re supposed to love them,” Vann said.