January 8, 2010

For more information, contact Eric Grant at 816-341-4606 or egrant@angus.org

The following is courtesy of the Baker City Herald:

Prominent Angus Breeder Bob Thomas Passes Away

Robert J. Thomas, a leader in the cattle industry in Baker County and nationwide, died Tuesday at his home near Baker City.

He was 85.

Bob was preceded in death by his wife, Gloria, in 1999. The Thomases met in a 4-H club in Vail, Iowa, were married on Feb. 6, 1949, and moved to Baker City from New York in 1959 with their young family to start Thomas Angus Ranch.

The operation has grown into one of the most famous and respected purebred Angus seedstock-producing ranches in the nation.

“He was a great guy. He really was. He is in a better spot with my Mom right now,” said Bob’s son, Rob Thomas, who continues the family ranching tradition running Thomas Angus Ranch in the Baker Valley northwest of Baker City.

“The passing of Bob Thomas is a tremendous loss to the beef industry as well as Baker County,” said Cory Parsons, Oregon State University Extension livestock agent in Baker County. “I know that Bob was a pioneer and a visionary in the American Angus Association^®, as well as the U.S. beef industry, and that he will be missed greatly.”

When neighboring Harrell Hereford Ranch won the 2009 Seedstock Producer of the Year Award from the Beef Improvement Federation, Bob Harrell Jr., president of the American Hereford Association gave the Thomas family and Thomas Angus Ranch part of the credit. Thomas Angus Ranch won the Seedstock Producer of the Year Award in 1997.

Thomas is survived by four children, including son Rob and three daughters: Kris Barr, Sue Spurgeon and Beth Phillips.

“He was a visionary in everything he did. He was always young for his age,” Barr said. “He had a vision and he’d just go for it, even if nobody else in the Angus business did. That made him successful in the Angus business.”

Bob and Gloria were raised in Iowa, where they started out with their first ranch before moving to New York and studied the Angus breed before settling in Baker County, Barr said.

Spurgeon said her father believed in serving his country and he joined the military at age 18, serving in the South Pacific during World War II.

“He was a wonderful father and he made work seem like fun,” Spurgeon said. "When we were kids we couldn’t afford much extra help. We didn’t know the difference between men’s work and women's work, mom and us kids pitched in and did it all.”

She said Bob was a man of faith, a longtime member of the Presbyterian Church, who quietly spoke of his faith in Jesus Christ.

“I remember dad loved mom more than anything, and next were his kids or Angus cattle, I’m not sure which,” said Phillips.

“He was proud of us. He taught us work ethics, but he always made it fun. He’d come in the room in the morning and say ‘hey do you want to ride horses today?’ ”

She said he made work sound fun in the morning, even though they knew they’d be dog-tired at the end of the day working on the ranch.

“The way he lived his life, he didn’t talk about it. He just lived it,” said Rob Thomas. “He just lived it, and that’s the way it was with his faith and with his family.

That’s the way it was with Angus cattle too.”

Myron Miles, a longtime family friend and rancher, credits Bob Thomas for giving him his start in the artificial insemination and cattle pregnancy testing business.

“Bob was the one who had confidence in me,” said Miles. “We were very close. Our families spent Christmas together.

“He was a pioneer in the cattle industry, not just in Baker County, but nationally,” Miles said. “You can go anywhere in the world and people who know Angus cattle know Bob Thomas Angus Ranch.”

For his lifetime commitment to the Angus industry, Bob was inducted into the American Angus Association’s Heritage Foundation, which is the association’s hall of fame.

“Possibly he and his wife, Gloria, were some of the most outstanding cattlemen in the United States. They had a good eye for good cattle, and they bred good cattle,” said Bob Beck, who ranches near Cove and formerly served as chairman of the Oregon Beef Council.

“For me and my family, they are about as good of friends as you can have,” said Beck, whose wife, Sharon Beck, is a former president of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association.

Mark Coomer, manager of community Lending at Northwest Farm Credit Services in Baker City, said that although Bob and his family are leaders in the cattle industry and the Angus breed locally and nationally, it was Bob and Gloria’s gracious welcome to him when he moved to Baker County in 1992 that he recalls mostly fondly.

“They opened their home and their hearts to me, my wife and two daughters. Because of that welcome I’m still in Baker City,” Coomer said. “From my perspective what made Bob Thomas great was character, integrity and his love of Angus cattle.

“He always spoke the truth to me. He epitomized to me the western rancher and consummate cattle breeder,” Coomer said. “His influence on me was significant enough to give me a piece of that passion for cattle sufficient enough that I now raise Angus cattle.

“Even my children share a passion for cattle partly instilled to them from the legacy that is Bob Thomas,” Coomer said.

Bryce Schumann, CEO of the American Angus Association, said Bob and Gloria took out lifetime memberships in the Association in 1950, and deserve a lot of credit for “enhancing the popularity of Angus cattle as the top choice for breeding stock among commercial ranchers in the West, not just Oregon, but in surrounding states.

“When you think about Bob Thomas, he embodies the American dream – someone didn’t start out with a lot. Just a dream of the kind of operation he wanted and a lot of hard work, sweat and toil to make that dream come true,” Schumann said.

Services will be held Services on Saturday, January 9 at 2:00 p.m. at the Baker City Church of the Nazarene.

Arrangements are available through Gray's West & Co., Pioneer Chapel, 541-523-3677 or 1-800-500-3677.

The family has designated the Angus Foundation for memorial gifts: The Angus Foundation, 3201 Frederick Avenue, Saint Joseph, MO 64506.

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