Iowa Butter Cow Sculptor Dies

All Things Considered:

Norma "Duffy" Lyon passed away over the weekend at the age of 81.
If you don't recognize that name, maybe this will help: for 46 years she was "the butter cow lady" at the annual Iowa State Fair. That is, she was the artist who every year would create a life-sized cow out of butter for display at that fair (and a few others around the country). It is, as the Iowa fair's website says, one of the big attractions in Des Moines every August.....
Lyon's last butter cow at the Iowa fair was sculpted in 2005. This afternoon, All Things Considered host Melissa Block spoke with the woman who took over the honor in 2006, Sarah Pratt, who like Lyon is from Toledo, Iowa.
"What was it about sculpting out of butter that [Lyon] liked so much?" Melissa asked.
"I think she was a born artist," Pratt said. "No matter what the medium was going to be, she was going to be an artist." It didn't hurt that she was also a dairy farmer and had studied animal science.

I remember my last trip to the Ohio State Fair.  We checked out the butter cow, and that year also featured a butter Darth Vader (I think it was 1983, the year Return of the Jedi hit screens).  It was neat, but I thought at the time that it was only an Ohio feature.  Later I would hear on the news about another state fair's sculpture.  The Dairy Board gets good press out of this, but they ought to have a big party at the end of the fair with tons of bread and corn on the cob, where people get to use the butter.

Update:  Here's the guy who did the Darth Vader sculpture, Dan Ross, who retired from creating Ohio's butter sculptures in 1999:

He's going out in style. For this year's exhibit, Mr. Ross created a collection of his greatest butter hits. In addition to the mini-Neil Armstrong, he molded a diminutive ballerina and Olympic gymnast, scowling Star Wars villain Darth Vader and swinging golfer Jack Nicklaus.

I thought I should give the man credit for his work.