As he retires from his position as president of the Colorado Farm Bureau, Don Shawcroft hopes he lead by example and emphasizes the importance of rural values. (Video by Katie Klann)

When Zippy Duvall’s wife died in January, he was brought to his knees. For four decades, she was everything, mother to his four kids a partner in his business.

Don Shawcroft was there to offer his shoulder to lean on and a heart that deeply cared.

“That’s who Don is,” said Duvall, the national president of the American Farm Bureau Federation. Shawcroft is retiring this month as the president of the Colorado Farm Bureau and after 40 years of service to the organization, fighting his own fight with cancer.

Answering the phone on a Monday morning, Georgia cattleman Duvall said he had just been thinking about his Colorado friend during his daily Bible devotional. He was reading from the Book of Philippians, about Paul the Apostle’s letter to his congregation in Philippi, as he faced execution for preaching the gospel. 

“Philippians 4:13: ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,'” Duvall recited over the phone. “That’s the perfect verse to describe Don – his faith, determination and wisdom and his ability to move on to bigger and better things.

“He always inspired me, because he depends on the Lord in all things to give him strength. When my wife died, Don showed me that strength and it got me through.”

Shawcroft is stepping down this month as the leader of the influential state organization he’s led for a decade. He has been a force for rural communities, and not just farms and ranches. He worked to maintain water in the San Luis Valley, to save the local hospital and offered encouraging words to others, while being an equally talented advocate in Washington and under the gold-domed Capitol in Denver.

“Don doesn’t just will things to be done,” said retiring state Sen. Larry Crowder of Alamosa, who’s known the Shawcroft family for decades. “He doesn’t just go out and do things for attention or power, the way people do sometimes. The things Don works on are much-needed issues – water, agriculture, health care, a lot of stuff. He’s an issues guy, very, very knowledgeable on whatever he’s talking about, too.”

The people inside the Farm Bureau say it’s hard to imagine Don not being in charge. He’s the guy people want to be in charge, one member after another described to Colorado Politics. Shawcroft doesn’t seek the limelight, but the limelight seems to find him, said Chad Vorthmann, the executive vice president of the state’s largest ag industry and rural family coalition.

Carlyle Currier, the vice president, is waiting in the wings, nervously.

“He has the fire,” said Currier, a rancher from Molina on the Grand Mesa.

Currier said he’ll find his footing on the shoulders of giants: Shawcroft and, before him, Alan Foutz, a wheat and sunflower farmer near Akron on the plains.

“I’ve got a great foundation to start from to lead the organization,” he said. “They’ve done a great job of moving Farm Bureau to the forefront of policy for Colorado and to be the respected voice of agriculture, so I have a real high standard to follow. 

“If you take over from someone who hasn’t done a good job, all you can do is improve it. I don’t have that luxury.”

Stepping away, carrying on

For the reason he does most things, stepping down benefits others, Shawcroft said, including giving Currier the chance to lead.

“I’ve got cancer, and it’s more difficult for people to understand me, and it’s difficult to look good in front of the camera, and that seems to be a critical part in whether people listen to you, ya know?” he said as matter-of-factly as ordering lunch.

He’s not through working, however. He’s still got cattle and crops on a big family spread to tend to, and a big family ready to take over when he’s ready to step down.

He has two daughters, (Andria Gay and Nicole Shawcroft) and four sons (Craig, Ryan, Lynn and Scott) with 15 grandkids to carry on the Shawcroft tradition in the San Luis Valley, just as it’s always been.

In 1864 Don’s great-grandfather, John Shawcroft, and his family left England by ship, then crossed the plains and settled in Fountain Green, Utah.

Following their Mormon faith, in 1882 they sold what they had, moved their family to the San Luis Valley to Richfield, just east of La Jara, and bought 25 head of cattle to start a family spread that’s never stopped spreading.

“It’s definitely a family legacy of farming,” daughter Andria said. “It’s cattle and farming. They grow the feed and they grow the cows.”

Don learned it from his parents, who learned it from theirs.

And “it” includes serving the Lord, tending farm and family, and offering your service to your community.

That’s why the Shawcrofts came to the valley in the first, to spread the faith and hope. They’ve never stopped that, either.

“He grew up with that idea of service, that you’re supposed to be involved in the community and support and help others,” his daughter said.

She sees the examples set by her grandparents in her father.

“Patience, staying calm, listening to people and really hearing what they’re saying, and being honest – that idea that your word means something,” she said of Don’s values. “And those are the things we definitely learned from him.”

John and Betty

To understand the national leader Don Shawcroft became, you have to appreciate who his parents were.

Don’s mother, Betty, was the president of the Colorado CattleWomen and the driving force behind just about anything that improved education across rural Colorado.

His father, John, was a Republican organizer who served a short time in the state Senate.

They were married in 1945. Betty was raised on the Medano/Zapata cattle and horse ranch near where the Great Sand Dunes National Monument is today, about 40 miles north of La Jara.

Betty’s mother was a teacher, and so was she.

The year after Don graduated from Centauri High School, his mother became the principal, a rarity for a woman in 1977. She later became the first woman to chair the Colorado High School Athletic Association.

She “was a master of working with people,” her son said.

When she passed away in 2014, her obituary said, “Betty was passionate about all of the many activities she supported in time and means. To the very last day of her life she was concerned about the care of her family, her horses, her cattle, her faith and fellow believers, and her community and country.”

His father died in 2012.

John Shawcroft was a natural community organizer, involved in ag groups, charities and local politics, his son recalled. His father was more the politician. His mom never ran for office, except for a conservation service board, which she led by acclamation.

His mother was a consensus-builder who valued relationships; his dad taught him to always keep things moving toward a solution.

“I always thought he just did those things because he wanted to,” Don said. “When I got a little older I realized he did it because he was the only one who could and would do it.”

The secret to their marriage was they respected their differences and each other’s opinion.

“She did things her way, and he did things his way,” their son recalled.

They both believed in making a difference and felt like that was the avenue available enough to them to make a difference.

Politically, his mother favored “person over party,” Shawcroft said. His father was more party over person.  

He can’t say who he takes after the most. They both rubbed off on him.

“I kind of think I’m a little of both,” he said. 

Becoming Don

As hard as it is to believe, Shawcroft didn’t grow up dreaming of life on the family farm. He dreamed of science. He dreamed of building things. He dreamed of big people in big cities respecting his name.

When he matured, he realized the farm and the valley were right where he needed to be all along.

The thing Shawcroft has always liked best about the trade is watching one thing become something else. Seeds and calves are predisposed to be something better, Shawcroft explained.

“They just need the right direction and support,” he said. “People are the same way.”

He didn’t pursue a future farmer’s curriculum in school or participate in other youth activities, mostly because his school was too small to have them until he was a senior. By that time he had his eyes on the lights of a college town, as far as he could get from cows and crops.

“At that time I didn’t think there was any way in the world I would come back to the ranch,” he said. “I thought I was going off to be a scientist or an engineer, things like that.”

He was in the electrical engineering program at Brigham Young when realized the work was an indoors job.

“I wanted to be outside, so that just didn’t work with my plan,” Shawcroft said. “Then I started to think about the value of science on a ranch, having children I could teach the value of work and the value of agriculture production.

“That lifestyle was what my decision to come back to the ranch was all about.”

Ambassador of the West

Like Vorthmann and Duvall, Colorado farmers and ranchers are awfully glad he did. 

“He truly is one of the greatest leaders that I’ve had the opportunity to work with,” Vorthmann said. “He certainly has a strong passion for policy and helping others. That’s what’s made him so uniquely qualified to lead an organization like Farm Bureau.”

Shawcroft loves inspirational quotes and random details about history. Everyone describes his great sense of humor. He loves hatching a well-considered prank, a function of his logistical nature.

Vorthmann remembered when he first joined the organization. There was a holiday party in Washington, D.C., and the Colorado Farm Bureau wanted to send an appropriate food item. Colorado had just passed Amendment 64, legalizing recreational marijuana.

“Don thought it would be funny to send Colorado ‘special’ brownies to the event,” Vorthmann said. “No, they didn’t contain any of the wild stuff, but it certainly got a surprised look and a good chuckle out of most of the attendees. It also gave Don the policy platform to talk about Colorado being the first state to legalize a new agricultural crop in a very long time – hemp.”

Vorthmann said Shawcrot’s leadership comes from a wellspring of genuine devotion to his service and community.

“Even as he was going through his initial round of cancer treatments, I don’t think he ever missed a conference call or shirked an ounce of his responsibilities, always wanting to know how others were doing and giving others recognition before himself,” the executive vice president said. “He never fails at trying to take more of the burden on himself to help us do our job better.

“The more I share, the more I realize how much I’m going to miss working with him day to day.”

Duvall, the national president, described Shawcroft as a great teacher, as well. 

Most of the agriculture Duvall knew about was in the East, before he became national president four years ago.

“Georgia and Alabama, if you look at agriculture, you don’t ever know when you cross the state line, and Don had to explain the West to me,” said Duvall 

“The West was just so different to me, and I was moved by the passion of the ranchers out there. Don was the go-to guy for me to learn about the Western issues, and because of that people tell me I’m one of the first Farm Bureau presidents who took an interest in the issues of the West.

“Don was was important in helping me understand and learn, so that when I was in front of the president, the secretary of agriculture or a congressional committee, I could help them relate to those issues, too. It was really important to me and the organization to represent those issues correctly. It was important to Don, too.”

Don’s illness has only grown people’s respect for him as a man of dignity, integrity and determination, Duvall reiterated.

“He’s been an inspiration to me, that no matter what kind of challenge is in front of you, you take it head-on and do it the best you can, and successful farmers and ranchers approach things in a way of ‘let’s get this done, we’ll handle the challenges.’ “

Becoming something else 

Shawcroft hopes state and national leaders are seeing how vital it is to produce our own food in this country during the crisis. 

“People understand how important the entire food chain is, not just the person who grows it, but they people who harvest it, process it and deliver it. The people from production to consumption were really highlighted, I think, in the effects of this pandemic. 

“Those who have an opinion about how food should be produced need to understand the bounty and amazing array of options for our food comes about because of the economic ways we produce food on a mass-scale basis.”

For a man of science and the land, Shawcroft describes agriculture like a Zen meditation.

“You get the privilege of working with nature and seeing things grow, whether that’s a crop or whether that’s a calf or a colt, you see it grow from one thing to something completely different and better than when it started. Think about starting with a seed in your hand. It’s amazing what they do. It grows into a plant that produces all kinds of products that are desirable for the livestock industry that are our animals and food. A calf can become a cow that reproduces for years. 

“If people apply that to their own lives, they can start out and make their way in life to become something else.”

If you bring crops or cattle along, you get a better result, he said.

“And if you treat people the right way you get a better result,” he explained, again probably sounding like Betty Mae Shawcroft.

He’s thinking about the next generation of farmers and where he would point the Farm Bureau after he steps down.

“I think their absolute priority is to develop the Farm Bureau to appeal to the next generation,” he said. “They see things differently, and they want to make a difference, but they don’t want to spend hours and hours in meetings. That’s not going to mean anything.”