The owners · Oxford, Kansas
A police officer,an early-childhood educator,and thirty acres of Kansas.
Debra and Mike Russell have been together twelve years. A blended family, four children, three dogs. For years they talked about building a place of their own, where their community could hold its biggest days. Antelope Creek Ranch is what came of it.
Who they are
The Russells, owner-operators of ACR.
Debra and Mike are married and have been together twelve years. Theirs is a blended family: four children, three dogs, and all the ordinary logistics that come with both.
What they hold in common is not complicated: family, hard work, and serving others. The first two explain the ranch. The third is what they each do all week.
- Together
- Twelve years, married.
- Family
- A blended family, with four children and three dogs.
- Mike
- The Wichita Police Department, more than twenty-five years.
- Debra
- Twenty-three years in early childhood education, and her own daycare. She also serves in law enforcement in Butler County.
The rest of the week
Two careers that have nothing to do with weddings.
Mike has served with the Wichita Police Department for more than twenty-five years. Debra has spent twenty-three years in early childhood education, owns her own daycare, and also serves in law enforcement in Butler County.
Neither of those is a hospitality résumé, and that is the part worth saying out loud. Both are work where somebody hands you their worst day, or hands you their child, and expects you to be steady about it. A venue is a smaller version of the same promise: a family hands you a date that cannot be moved.
- 25+
- Years in uniform
- Mike, Wichita Police Department
- 23
- Years in early education
- Debra, and her own daycare
How it started
She had already seen what these places do.
Debra’s business experience took her through local venues and catering companies, and she saw at close range what a good one does for a family, and what a bad one costs them. That is harder to unsee than it sounds.
For years the two of them talked about how much it would mean to have a place of their own. Somewhere people could celebrate the biggest days they get, and somewhere the Russells could serve their community in a way neither a patrol shift nor a classroom allows.
- What she saw
- Local venues and catering companies, from the working side rather than the guest side.
- What they wanted
- A place of their own, for the days a family only gets a few of.
What it is for
Memories, milestones, and something to hand down.
A family business built on purpose, for the things people keep afterwards: the memories, the milestones, and the legacies that outlast everybody who had a hand in making them.
The hope is that Antelope Creek Ranch turns up inside a great many families’ stories over the years, and that it becomes a legacy of the Russells’ own, to pass to their four children one day.
Availability
Ask them yourself.
The calendar is public, and nothing is held back for a phone call. Pick a date and it carries into the form. What you send goes to Debra.