The Lineage of a Legacy

For a brief shining moment, Gene Bergschneider was a Grand Champion Quarter Horse Showman. Thankfully for the Illinois beef industry, he gave up showing horses early on and focused his entire career on breeding iconic Herefords moving not just his farm but the industry itself ever forward.

Gene still laughs about the time he won the Hoof & Horn Club Showmanship Contest as a University of Illinois student by showing a horse. He also says it only convinced him his heart was with cattle, specifically Herefords. Just a few years later, he would graduate from the university and head back to the fourth-generation New Berlin farm where he grew up showing cattle locally.

Maybe that show shaped his passion for supporting youth; maybe it came from his own experiences growing up. Gene cannot quite pinpoint it, but he knows it has always been something he liked to do, not only youth in the industry but around the community too. “He always tried to be helpful to young farmers and beef exhibitors; he has been very active with them,” says his brother Bruce Bergschneider.

The Illinois beef world has long recognized his leadership and expertise in cattle breeding and furthering the youth of the industry, but what you may not know is he directs that same passion toward New Berlin athletics. In fact, he recently received this year’s Friend of County award at the Sangamon County Boys Basketball Tournament. “He is an outstanding man who has served people and his community his entire life,” New Berlin Athletic Director Blake Lucas says.

Previously he was inducted into the New Berlin High School Sports Hall of Fame as well as the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame as a friend of the sport. He volunteered as timer at New Berlin High School basketball games for more than 60 years and was instrumental in starting the football program, then served as football timer for more than 40 years.

He served on boards at the school, in community club, at the local elevator, in extension and with the Land of Lincoln Livestock Breeders Association, who awarded him the 2022 Land of Lincoln Purebred Livestock Breeders Award for his contributions to the beef industry.

County fairs and the Illinois State Fair also benefited from Gene’s dedication as he showed Herefords at the State Fair for 70 years and by 50 years in, even had Gene Bergschneider Day in Illinois declared by Governor Jim Edgar.

For decades he exhibited at county fairs all over the area, often showing up to the State Fair with the animals already sold “and people waiting with a truck to take them when it was over,” he says. At one time Gene oversaw the beef show at the State Fair and, more recently, he was recognized as the 2022 Illinois State Fair County Fair Person.

For more than 40 years Gene served on the Sangamon County Fair Board and, in fact, he is still co-superintendent of the beef show with his son Chris, one of four sons he and his wife raised. Gene and his wife, Darlene, will celebrate their 60th anniversary this year and now enjoy watching community ball games, along with cattle shows. “Now I watch kids show cattle, and I showed cattle against their granddads!” he says.

Through it all, raising exceptional purebred Herefords remained his passion. “They were docile, easy to work with and you could put them in the pasture and forget about them,” he says. In 1960, he struck gold when he showed the Grand Champion carcass steer on both foot and rail at the International Livestock Show in Chicago — the only one in history. “The next year we went back to the same breeder and bought his brother; he didn’t do anything,” says Gene.

Such is the life of a beef showman, and it didn’t deter him. “I just enjoyed doing it, and it’s a year-long project, so you’d better enjoy it,” he says. “If you enjoy it, it’s not really work.”

Though Gene will try to tell you his work is done, with his nephew running the farm now and his showman days behind him, make no mistake, this is a legacy still in progress and it is a story he’s not done with any more than he can stop himself from giving his nephew input on the farm. Cattle captured his heart and soul more than 75 years ago and they won’t let go any time soon.