Answering the Call | Jan Lyons 2025 National Golden Spur Award

Article appears in Summer 2025 Ranch Record; written by Bob Welch

In 1963, Jan Ferguson was a freshman at Ohio State University pursuing an animal science degree. Finishing at the top-three of her first class on the subject, she had the option to forego the final exam and instead have an interview with the professor.

He asked her what her plans were for her degree. She responded, “I’d like to be a herdsman.” The professor cautioned her that animal management was men’s work and advised her to change her goals. As a freshman with little confidence, Jan didn’t argue, but she never forgot, either.

In fact, Jan Lyons (nee Ferguson) went on to not only found and develop her own herd of registered Black Angus cattle outside of Manhattan, Kan., she rose the ranks to become the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association president and guided its membership through one of the most harrowing crises the industry has seen, earning her the 2025 National Golden Spur Award.

Born in rural Ohio to a dairy farming family, Jan never knew a world without cows.

World War II interrupted her father’s plans for farming, and he joined the 101st Airborne as a glider pilot. For the extra risk, he earned $18 more a month–money with which he already had plans to buy his own farm. He was in Europe when Jan was born and upon his return, used his G.I. Bill proceeds to get started farming.

When Jan was 11 years old, her father sold his Ayrshire milk cows and bought a set of Black Angus females.

“I loved working with the cattle,” Jan says. In fact, she began showing at the local county fair at 8 years old. “My parents were very encouraging, and dad was probably a big influence on my life because he convinced me through not only his actions, but words that you can do anything if you’re willing to work hard enough and take advantage of the opportunities you have.”

She left home with a scholarship for OSU and dreams of making her living as a herdsman, but life had some detours in store before she could see those realities.

Jan met Frank Lyons–another rural Ohio farm kid–and marriage followed quickly. Frank was on track to become a radiologist, joined the Army and was being trained to serve in Vietnam. First stationed in a Denver, Colo., suburb, he was transferred to Fort Irwin outside of Manhattan, Kan.

“Our idea of Kansas, which is what a lot of people have, was just to get through the state as fast as you can and keep driving on I-70,” she says. “But the Flint Hills of Kansas, the hills and the good grass country, reminded us of the hills back home. And Frank and I both decided this is where we want to live.”

While developing a ranch and seedstock herd was both Frank and Jan’s dream, Jan made it. her full-time pursuit as Frank began a successful radiology private practice. Evenings, weekends and vacation, though, had Frank building fence, evaluating cow purchases and searching for land to expand.

The Flint Hills, which run from Oklahoma to the Nebraska border, are legendary among cattlemen. In the trail drive era, herds would come from Texas through Oklahoma to be rested and fattened on the tall grass prairie before being shipped eastward to market. It’s a phenomenon that still happens today, although in a different way.

During westward settlement, much of Kansas was put under the plow. The Flint Hills, however, avoided the fate of the farmer due to the rocky soil. Instead a virtual cattlemen’s paradise was preserved–and remains so today.

“It has maintained its integrity,” Jan says of her home range. “It’s still natural. Our grasses have long root systems in the ground. This grass has some of the best nutrition for young calves, for cattle. So we had everything going for us as this was the place to be if you want tot raise good cattle.”

They began with a small number of cows and used artificial insemination to improve their genetics. Their two young daughters, Debbie and Amy, fell right into the lifestyle and the family was soon on the road to cattle shows across the state and beyond. The cowherd and their land holdings began to grow as well. The Lyons began by selling bulls private treaty, but after having the opportunity to buy a larger set of reputation females, realized they needed to host a sale.

“I learned very quickly that what I thought was a top bull or a good bull for them may not be what my customers wanted,” Jan says. “I always respected what they were wanting. We tried to work with each customer individually and try to help them in their programs, because if they’re successful, we would be successful.”

Even up to this point, Jan was a trailblazer in the seedstock Angus world and the ranching community around Manhattan. She was a local 4-H leader and was increasing her involvement in the Kansas Angus Association and the Kansas Livestock Association, but it was her concern for her beloved Flint Hills that thrust her into a more prominent leadership role within her circles.

Fort Riley, the Army base where Frank worked when they first came to Manhattan, and the home to the Big Red One was looking to expand in the late 1980s. Already owning over 100,000 acres, they essentially wanted to double their footprint–and much of that would have been Flint Hills. The plan was to use the land for tank combat training–devastating the natural ecosystem.

“I was part of the group that formed Preserve the Flint Hills,” Jan says. ” And we had a very wide following, because when you’re threatened, people want to do something.”

She met with elected officials at every level–including trips to Washington, D.C., to force a study to determine whether this ground was truly necessary to prepare the army for future battles. Ultimately, the expansion project was scuttled due in no small part to the efforts of the local ranching and farming community. Jan was forever changed.

“She realized that the combined efforts of the people could really have an effect,” Frank says. “And she felt that was time well spent.”

She began ramping up her involvement in the Kansas Angus Association and the KLA–and not backing down.

“Back in the day, the Kansas Angus Association would have their meetings,” Jan’s oldest daughter Debbie explains. “The women were excused to the auxiliary meeting, the kids were excused to the junior association meeting and the men stayed in the room to discuss the policies and things happening around the association. Well, mom didn’t leave that room.”

“I’ve come to realize that sometimes we put our own ceiling on us as women,” Jan says. “I found that I always participated in the different committees and leadership activities as a producer, so I never thought that it had much to do with the fact that I was a woman. And the people accepted me. I didn’t try to assert the fact that I was a woman and you needed to include me. It just was not an issue. I didn’t look for it to be an issue.”

Eventually, Jan became the first female president of the Kansas Livestock Association. Then, she became involved on the Cattlemen’s Beef Board. At the time, the industry was seeing a decline in demand and a rise in unsatisfactory customer experiences with beef. Jan and her teammates knew that something had  to be done. They decided to promote the Checkoff Program to encourage a dollar per head fee for every animal sold to be earmarked form promotion and research with the singular goal of driving demand for beef.

Jan was part of the group of industry visionaries who, through the Checkoff Program, changed the marketing focus on the beef industry to a strategy of listening to consumers and responding with what they desired.

“We were able to turn around demand when we started focusing on it and listening to the consumers,” she says. ” That was a big thing.”

The research portion of the Checkoff dollars also took an inward focus, identifying potential threats to beef demand. The most significant finding, as time would reveal, was the potential through of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), more commonly known as mad cow disease. The beef markets in the United Kingdom and Japan were devastated when BSE was discovered in their cows.

Knowing the likelihood of it becoming a problem int he United States, the Cattlemen’s Beef Board approved Checkoff funds to research what was causing the disease–eventually discovering that it came from consumption of beef byproducts being ground into feed for live cattle. It also discovered that the disease was limited to the nervous system and did not enter the muscle. The funds eventually helped promote a bill that would outlaw feeding live cattle with feed that contained beef byproducts int he United States. Finally, a website was developed that had all the necessary information about BSE that the consuming public would need to know and could be made live in a moment’s notice.

The industry was being shaken up in other ways, as well. The National Cattlemen’s Association, the Cattlemen’s Beef Board, the Meat Export Federation and the National Livestock and Meat Board combined to become the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, creating increased efficiencies in the industry.

In the meantime, as Jan worked up the ranks of the Cattlemen’s Beef Board and the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, her family and her seedstock operation grew. She and Frank’s daughters got married and began to have kids of their own–each expanding the operation in their own ways. One grandson had some particularly difficult health challenges and Jan stepped back from her industry service roles to help.

Upon his recovery, Jan found herself called to service with the industry again as an officer with the NCBA.

“I always talked with both girls and Frank, and then later the girls’ husbands when I was asked  to take on a new role,” Jan says. ” We would talk as a group, and they would say ‘ We will take care of the ranch.’ And initially, it wasn’t such an overburdening demand… until we got BSE.”

In the Fall of 2003, Jan was named president-elect for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. She would officially take over the reins of the association at the convention in February of the next year.

On December 23, as she was dutifully Christmas shopping for her growing band of grandchildren, news broke that would change her and her family’s life.

The USDA had discovered a cow that tested positive for BSE in Washington state, known now as “the cow that stole Christmas.”

As she shopped, Jan received the call that soon the announcement would go public and they needed her on a conference call with the media and to catch the first flight possible to Washington D.C.

Her work. helping pass the Beef Checkoff Program, the approval of BSE research and the authorization of a crisis plan was all about to be tested. But not before she opened Christmas gifts with her family. She flew out on Dec. 26 to begin the most trying year of her life.

“We set up a conference call with nationwide media,” Jan says. “That was a proactive decision. We had the USDA on the line, we had Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, we had all the State Beef Council’s representatives, we had affiliates, we had veterinarians and we had over 110 media from the Los Angeles Times to the New York Times and across the country. This was our attempt to answer questions. The media was anxious to print something. We wanted it to be truth and facts.”

The NCBA rolled out the pre-developed website, provided important details about the source of the cow (she was a dairy cow from Canada) the safety of beef (BSE never entered the food chain) and stuck to their talking points. Daily conference calls with media were established to disseminate any new information, shoot down falsehoods and promote the truth of the situation.

Then came the hard part.

“It was an all-hands-on-deck moment,” Jan says. “And we were unified with those messages. The beef was safe. We were still eating it. It was fortuitous, as a woman I could say I feed hamburgers to my kids and grandkids. That was a critical message. CNN came out to our ranch and shot some footage. Then we got that footage to the stations. Instead of that old staggering cow that we were seeing on every report there was some Angus cattle, there were some farms, and it was a much more pleasant sight. And we could talk about it in that framework.

“I made a lot of stops. I think Frank and the girls would tell you I was gone over 200 days that year to Washington testifying, meeting with Japan and others. The Japanese trade team came here to the ranch. We showed them around trying to get those markets opened again. Dealing with the aftermath, if you will. We were very successful.”

Consumer demand took an expected immediate drop in the wake of the BSE case. Within a few weeks, however it recovered. Then, demand began to exceed where it had been previous to the crisis.

“Mom brought her big heart and her sharp mind to the beef industry,” says daughter Amy Lyons-Langvardt. “And she has a really good loud voice and it’s clear in many ways, literally and figuratively. She’s able to distill things down and represent a large group of people and represent the industry.”

While certainly a crisis, due to the forward-thinking, consistent messaging, unyielding willingness to give interviews and inherently safe food supply system, the beef industry was able to manage the crisis not only to prevent calamity, but to improve the perception of the product. And there’s no question Jan Lyons was one of the many members of the industry present and active in each step of the saga. Jan is keen to credit leaders from George W. Bush to Paul Genho to Kendal Frazier to Dee Likes as people who stepped up to help the beef industry weather the storm.

“A lot of people could have played my role,” she says. “I was very honored to be asked to help. People believed in me at the time and went ahead and supported my efforts and helped prepare. I was part of a team, and I wanted to play my role whatever that was. When it was all said and done, I breathed a sigh of relief.”

Today, Jan relishes storytelling and sharing her wisdom. Driving to the ranch’s southern division, she explains to passengers the history of the Flint Hills, points out producers who purchase her bulls and describes their operations, explains the necessary qualities for serving well on boards of directors and brags on her family’s accomplishments.

One story that she tells hesitantly, however, is during her travels as NCBA president, she had the opportunity to visit her alma mater, Ohio State University. She resolved to pay a visit to the professor who told her to stick to woman’s work and show him just what kind of work a woman could do. As it turned out, she was told he was retired and not in Columbus any longer.

“I had to bite my tongue to not say, ‘Well, that’s a good thing,'” she says with a sly grin.

No longer involved in the day-to-day operations of the cow herd, Jan and Frank have embraced the role of matriarch and patriarch. They’ve moved out of the beautiful tw0-story farmhouse they restored to a ranch-style home that’s easier on knees and hips–and to make room for the third generation working the ranch.

“She weathered the storms,” Lyons-Langvardt says. “She is able to step up to every challenge.”

Lyons Ranch has continued to expand–becoming one of the premier Angus seedstock sources in the state of Kansas. Frank and Jan’s family has expanded, as well. With seven grandchildren in professions from production agriculture to medicine, Jan bubbles with pride when she speaks of her progeny.

“The ranch started small,” she says. “We had a plan. Of course, we changed that plan, but we held on to our beliefs. The belief in integrity and customer satisfaction and dealing with customers in a fair and honest way – that won’t change. It’s about the family for me now. I know deep down they’ll carry on the legacy that built the ranch. I’m very confident in the leadership that we have going forward.

“Frank and I are blessed.”