U.S. beef is at the heart of the classic “American” dish and it can certainly be sorely missed when traveling abroad… especially in Southwest Asia. But, 1st Lieutenant Peter Shinn of the National Guard’s 185th Air Refueling Wing found one Iowa couple who’s trying to bring local beef to troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One Iowa couple is making sure U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are getting a taste of home. And they’re doing so with help from an extensive network of volunteers, and from the Iowa Air National Guard’s 185th Air Refueling Wing.
Ted and Dee Ann Paulsrud of Danbury, both of whom are long-time members and leaders of the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association (ICA) are now leading an initiative to get Iowa beef sticks to U.S. troops in southwest Asia. The ICA took on that effort shortly after the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001. But the program proved costly, both in time and money, and ICA decided to drop the initiative a little over a year ago. Dee Ann Paulsrud, now widely known as “The Beef Stick Lady,” picks up the story from there.
“It started a year ago in November [2006] when my husband was retiring off the Iowa Cattlemen’s board for District VII Director,” she told Brownfield. “They no longer were going to do it at the state level. They already had done it for four years and then, they were aborting the program. Well, we didn’t want to do that.”
So the Paulsruds took up where ICA left off. And Dee Ann Paulsrud said they’ve developed an all-volunteer beef stick processing and distribution system, all aimed at getting Iowa beef to American fighting men and women in Southwest Asia.
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