Meet Darin & Michele Deaton

Michele is a retired teacher specializing in Home Economics, and Darin is a Doctor of Physical Therapy and founding partner Riata Therapy Specialists and DPT Physical Therapy & Performance. Darin still practices part time and manages the companies that service both larger metropolitan and rural Texas. 

Both Darin and Michele Deaton come from ranching and farming heritage. Michele’s family is predominantly from the Panhandle of Texas. Both of her parents grew up in farming families and in rural lifestyles and later moved to the Fort Worth area. She can remember spending summertime with her Grandfather, Bascom (Smiley) Baxter, at his grain farm in Texline, Texas. She learned how important the agricultural farming community is and the work that it takes to farm. She spent lots of hours falling asleep in tractor cabs and playing in irrigation ditches.

Darin is a 6th generation Texan and his family has been involved in farming, timber production and ranching since the early 1800’s. His family is a founding family of Texas and his 3rd great grandfather, George Washington Smyth, was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the second Land Commissioner of the State of Texas. Darin did not grow up on a ranch, but spent many of his summers with his grandmother, Eloise Race, working on The Smyth Ranch in Uvalde, Texas.