Cooperative Extension Service Communications and Technology Department 3354 1000 E. University Ave. Laramie, WY 82071 (307) 766-6342 • fax (307) 766-3998 • www.uwyo.edu

 

For Immediate Release

 

 

Contact: Steven L. Miller, Senior Editor

Phone: (307) 766-6342

E-mail: slmiller@uwyo.edu

Archived News Site www.uwyo.edu/agadmin/news/news.htm

 

Date: Sept. 18, 2006

 

UW’s Legacy Award honors Wyoming ranch family

            This year’s University of Wyoming College of Agriculture’s Legacy Award is about generations.

            The award honors the contributions to agriculture of former Governor and U.S. Senator Cliff Hansen and his wife, Martha, and their late daughter, Mary Mead and her former husband Peter Mead, and their children, Brad Mead, Matt Mead and Muffy Mead-Ferro.

            The award is also about anyone who steps into the Cliff and Martha Hansen Livestock Teaching Arena and the Mary Mead Education Wing.

            The family legacy will carry on with future recipients of the new Mary Mead Scholarship for Women in Agriculture to be awarded to women majoring in any of the agriculture degrees in the college.

            The family will be honored this Friday and Saturday during Ag Appreciation Weekend at the college along with Jerry Rankin, chief operating officer and vice chairman of the board of The Jackson State Bank and Trust, and Blair Wolfley, manager of the Washington State University’s Vancouver Research and Extension Unit and WSU Extension’s southwest district director, as outstanding alumni. The outstanding research partner of the year is Bayer CropScience for its support of research at the college. 

            Muffy is happy about the scholarship, but she said she realizes it’s just one part of the vast array of offerings by the college.

            “There are many, many ways to have exciting and productive careers in agriculture that will enable people to make a large contribution to the world,” said Muffy, who lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the author of two books. “Just to be part of the college and UW and part of that effort to help people achieve their goals in agriculture is really gratifying.”

            Matt, U.S. Attorney for Wyoming who works in Cheyenne, drives by the teaching arena whenever he goes to his ranch. “I have to admit my heart swells with pride knowing a facility that provides so much to so many has the names of my grandparents and Mom on the building,” he said.

            Cliff Hansen crystallized the value of education to Brad early. Brad recalls a day more than 30 years ago when his grandfather talked about life while the two hauled cattle.

            “He said you can have lots of acres or a nice horse or a pickup, but there is nothing you have that can’t be taken away, except an education,” Brad remembered. “That was what his dad told him, and that sticks firmly in my mind. Education is the one thing you can obtain for yourself and can never lose. I think that’s one reason we are pretty excited about the scholarship. My brother, sister, and I believe the scholarship is appropriate. My mom, too, was a school teacher for awhile. Education is one of the things my family thought was pretty important, and UW, too.”

            Peter Mead said he is honored the Mead family is receiving the Legacy Award, “especially in view of how many fine ranching families there are in Wyoming. We feel especially privileged to be selected from that group.”

            Peter grew up in Vermont and was skiing in Wyoming when he began taking pack trips into the Tetons and Gros Ventre River Valley for a dude ranch. Muffy said her mother joked what first attracted her to him was the saddle in the back of his car and the skis on top.

             “Within one year of them getting married, Granddad decided to enter politics and the ranch management fell to my mom and dad,” Muffy said. “It was amazing the way my father rose to the occasion. The ranch flourished under him. He plunged full speed ahead into a life I don’t think he had planned on. It was an adventure.”

            Mary and Peter would later divorce, but Peter still helps Brad and others in ranch matters. Peter attributes his ranching success to “not anything more than a love of ranching, hard work, and the support of family.”

             Muffy is turning land she purchased in Wyoming from crop land to cattle pasture. “It’s been a slow process but a wonderful adventure for me and for my kids,” she said. “They think Wyoming is the greatest place in the world.”

            Matt never left Wyoming, noting all his best opportunities were right here.

            The same holds true today. “I have great love for our state,” he said. “The land certainly is wonderful, but it is the Wyoming people and the Wyoming spirit that make our state the best place to live.”

            He says a person sometimes returns to his or her roots. “This is particularly true when it is those roots that gave each of us the ultimate childhood, providing fun certainly, but, perhaps more importantly, lessons of life,” he noted. “I want to provide the ranching experience to my kids and, frankly, I want it for myself and my wife. Many of my family’s best days are when we can get away and spend time together working on the ranch.”

            Brad didn’t stay in Wyoming after graduating from law school. He and his wife, Kate, moved to Phoenix, Arizona, where he practiced law for almost eight years. They returned to raise their children in Wyoming. He manages the family ranch near Jackson and has his own law firm in Jackson.

            “We wanted them to be in Wyoming schools, which are some of the best in the world,” he said. “We wanted them to be around their extended family and, as they got old enough, to appreciate their surroundings to be rural instead of urban.”

            The couple also wanted to give their children an opportunity to earn a living in Wyoming agriculture.

             “Agriculture is one of the few areas of human endeavor that gives an individual a chance every day to be a problem solver, an innovator, a technician, an inventor, a business man, a doctor – and do all that outside in the company of their family,” he said.

            They said a spirit of independence and self-determination was instilled in them by their parents and grandparents – characteristics they want to pass along to their children.

            Matt said his mother provided the best example of what his family taught him. During her run for governor, she asked him to operate the ranch. She didn’t give much instruction, but “she did tell me something that has come to mean a great deal to me as I continue to reflect on the way she led her life,” he said.

            She told him when gathering cattle a person has to ride the outside fence line, the longest loop. The ride is harder and longer than anyone else’s, but it is the only way to ensure an animal is not left behind.

            “It is what your grandfather did, what your father did, and it is what we expect from you,” she told her son.

            “Her comment is very symbolic to me,” Matt said. “It is a reminder that in every area of our lives, in order to do our best, we must go where it may be difficult and even perhaps dangerous, but this is the only way to make certain we don’t miss out or lose what we care about.”

            The instruction will stay with him forever, he said, “Because riding the ‘longest loop’ is what Mom did in every aspect and every day of her life, and it is what she was doing on the day she died.”

            On the Web: www.uwyo.edu/UWAG/Outstanding_Alumni.asp

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