Robert “Marion” Lucas, the former manager and CEO of the Iowa State Fair, died on Jan. 9 at the Miller County Care and Rehabilitation Center in Tuscumbia, Missouri. He was 82.
Lucas — who was born on March 6, 1942, in New Florence, Missouri — became the director of the Missouri State Fair from 1981 until 1986, when he moved to Iowa to work as the director of the Iowa State Fair until 2002. He later returned to Missouri to run the fair there again from 2007 to 2009.
On Facebook, the Iowa State Fair shared news of his death with a story about how Lucas touched the life of a young Jeremy Parsons, the current manager and CEO of the fair…