Growing up he was part of a community of family living near each other: the Emory and Ann Olive Stoddards (his sister's family) and the Frank and Mary Grace Burches (his other sister's family). He and his siblings all attended school in Patagonia where had a keen interest in agriculture and played violin in the school orchestra. About 1924 he bought the homestead property of Henry Belue to raise cattle - today it's the seven-acre Douglas orchard on Lower Elgin Road. When he graduated from Patagonia High in 1928, he went to work for the Forest Service as a mule packer, and then switched to forest research while attending the University of Arizona's College of Agriculture. He graduated from UA in 1932 and began working for the UA Santa Rita Experiment Station. By 1935 he was working as the Canelo ranger in the Coronado National Forest.

 He also worked for the U.S. Soil Conservation Service in Texas and California and by 1947 was living in the Phoenix area where he was employed by the State of Arizona teaching farming to veterans who had returned from WWII. He also appraised land for the Federal Land Bank. He died at age 69 in 1977.