Norma (Duffy) Lyon, the ‘Butter-Cow Lady,’ Dies at 81 [View All]

[sufrommich]

Norma (Duffy) Lyon, a self-described dairy farmer’s wife and mother of nine who achieved fame well beyond the Midwest as the “Butter-Cow Lady” of the Iowa State Fair, sculpturing tons of U.S. Grade AA salted butter each year into life-size figures of cows, famous people and, once, a diorama of the Last Supper, died on Sunday in Marshalltown, Iowa. She was 81.


Norma "Duffy" Lyon stands next to a life-size dairy cow she sculpted from butter at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, Iowa in 2003.
Her family said the apparent cause was a stroke.

Ms. Lyon’s sculpture reached a vast audience during her lifetime, partly because she worked not just in Iowa but also at state fairs throughout rural America, and partly because the idea of a butter sculptor from Iowa was just irresistible to television people in the big city.

She appeared on “Today” and “The Tonight Show.” On “Late Night With David Letterman” in 1984, she showed up with a small cheddar-cheese version of her butter cow — to make it easier to carry, she said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/us/28lyon.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto
I always loved those butter sculptures.