TM
The Largest Privately Owned Hereford Newspaper in North America The one that’s read “from cover to cover.” • Visit us on the web at: www.herefordamerica.com
Vol. 20., No. 5
Serving Commercial Cattlemen & Registered Hereford Breeders
Published by: Hereford America, Inc. • 13823 Beaver Creek Place • Reva, SD 57651
Editorial Comments... Byron Bayers I am writing this editorial immediately after watching President Trump’s inauguration and watching President Obama’s Byron Bayers helicoptering away. I have either heard or watched the inauguration of every President in my lifetime, that included Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who we had to listen to his inauguration on radio because we didn’t have TV then; Harry Truman who came in as President when Roosevelt passed away and was then later elected president himself; Dwight Eisenhower, who was the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in World War Two; Jack Kennedy who followed Eisenhower, and was followed by Lyndon Johnson after Kennedy was assassinated; followed by Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Regan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama and now Trump. I strongly supported Trump for several reasons, but I think my reasons for supporting Trump will be immaterial to most of you reading this as you used your own judgment when you voted. (You did vote?) I am very disturbed today when our peaceful transition of power to the most powerful man on earth, who will be leading the most powerful nation on earth, was not supported by some 60 odd persons from the House of Representatives. Of all the Presidents that I watched or heard by radio, being inaugurated, not all of them were people that either I or my family supported, but (continued on page 8)
February 2017
Beesons Combine Knowledge, Hard Work, Passion for the Hereford breed by Becky Simpson In the summer of 1954, while “trading help” at the Sioux Empire Fair in Sioux Falls, SD, an “Okie” with a purebred Polled Hereford herd met a Minnesota farm girl showing her dad’s
purebred Shorthorns with her three sisters. Little did Jack and Bev Beeson know that it was the beginning of a partnership that would endure for 60 years. The owners of JB Ranch at Wayne,
Jack and Bev Beeson, met 63 years ago. Their dedication to Hereford cattle has created a lasting legacy, garnering a great deal of respect among breeders. This sign was made by a customer from the Flint Hills of Kansas.
NE, the Beesons are as recognizable and respected in cattle circles as they are in the community where Jack has made his home since 1950. They are nearly inseparable – you rarely see one without the other – and in the ways long-married couples, they can finish each other’s thoughts and sentences and know as much about their spouse’s family history as they do their own. In the three years between that first meeting and their marriage on June 19, 1957, Jack says “I put 50,000 miles on my good Pontiac car” driving from Nebraska to southwestern Minnesota to see Bev. A “Depression baby,” Jack grew up near Garber, OK, the oldest of three children born to farming parents. His grandfather Beeson was one of the original “Sooners” who staked a claim on the Cherokee Strip. (He wasn’t quite “soon” enough, though, as he ended up (continued on page 22)
Ochsner Family Rises From the Ashes
George and Ruby Ochsner, weathered the fire storm.
by Sandy Hanson, Star-Herald, Torrington, WY Reprinted with permission Residents of the Prairie Center Community north of Torrington, WY, are looking forward to 2017. The fires are out. The blackened ground is covered with snow, and people’s spirits have won out, as evidenced by George Ochsner, who exclaimed with a laugh, “At least it killed the grasshoppers!” The ranching patriarch’s attitude reflects the relief and forwardlooking attitude of his family five months after a raging prairie fire swept the Prairie Center community about 16 miles north of Torrington, scorching the earth and killing dozens of cattle in a 24-hour rampage that reached the edges of Sioux County. While the Ochsner family, sons Rodney and Blake, and daughter and son-in-law, Dixie and Steve Roth, and their son, Rustin, and his young family, took the brunt of the damage, other community families suffered as well. The Ochsners’ other daughter, Tena Baldwin, and her family live 12 miles north and escaped the property devastation, although Tena received seconddegree burns to her hands, and singed hair, while fighting the fire. The nightmare began July 11 when a blaze erupted after a smouldering fire from a lightning strike the day before was driven across country with winds as high as 58 mph. The homes of Rustin, Rodney and George were sitting in the path of the fire, and the families (continued on page 30)