Iowa State Fair's Butter Cow Lady

In the last blog I did, I talked about the Iowa State Fair and mentioned the popular Butter Cow Lady. We actually have a book on her life and her art, that's called - surprise - The Butter Cow Lady (745.0973 LYO in the biography section). Because of the thinness of the book, it's an easy one to overlook on the shelf. This is definitely a book that's "lost in the stacks."

Written by B. Green, this is an easy read about Norma "Duffy" Lyon's life. She was born in 1929 in Tennessee, but grew up in Keosauqua, Iowa, when her family moved to care for Norma's grandmother. In 1947, she enrolled in the college that is now called Iowa State University in Ames. She wanted to become a veterinarian, but the school did not allow women in that program, so she switched to animal science. While in school, she met her future husband, Joe Lyon.

She remembers going to the Iowa State Fair during this time, and seeing the butter cows done by J. E. Wallace, who was the first butter sculpture for the fair. Earl Frank Dutt was the second, and Duffy is the third person to work in butter. She started working on butter cows back in 1960.

The photos, along with the written text, give readers an idea of the process she uses to create her art. In addition to cows, she has done the "American Gothic," Elvis Presley, a horse, a country school scene - just to name a few of her creations in her 40+ career as a butter sculptor.

If you get a chance to go to the Iowa State Fair in August, don't expect to see her work. She turned over the responsibility to her apprentice, Sarah Pratt, in 2006. Here's a link to the fair site with a brief history of the butter cow: http://www.iowastatefair.org/entertainment/buttercow.php

c Waterloo Public Library 2008