THE BUTTER COW LADY

Norma Duffield Stong Lyon (July 29, 1929 – June 26, 2011)  Known as "Duffy," she considered herself a dairy farmer and artist. She earned the nickname, The Butter Cow Lady, for her elaborate butter sculptures at the Iowa State Fair. From 1960 until her last sculpture in 2005, she sat in a cooler and sculpted a life-size 400-lb. butter cow.


Lyon was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Her father was a newspaper editor and her grandmother, Bertha Clark, was a founder of the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. An uncle, Phil Stong, was author of the book “State Fair,” which was the basis of the Rodgers and Hammerstein film and musical of the same name.

Because they did not allow women in the Veterinary Sciences program, she studied animal science at Iowa State University in the late 1940s. The American sculptor, Christian Petersen, was an artist in residence at that time. His encouragement, after seeing an ice sculpture she made for a campus winter festival, led her to take several of his studio classes before graduating in 1951.

She married Joe Lyon in 1950 and they moved to Toledo IA to run their dairy farm, Lyon Jerseys. They had nine children.

In 1960, she took over the Iowa State Fair butter cow creation, a tradition since 1911. She later expanded to creating other sculptures, including Garth Brooks, Elvis Presley, John Wayne,  the Peanuts characters, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, American Gothic by Grant Wood and the Last Supper.

She died from complications of a stroke in Marshalltown IA, age 81.

The bronze butter cow statue, under what's left of a large oak tree on a hill at the intersection of Highway 30 and Highway 63, pays homage to Toledo's 'butter cow lady." Neal Deatron cast the sculpture Lyon made from 800 pounds of clay. The statue was sponsored by the Arts council of Tama-Toledo Area and was dedicated August 24, 1991.