It takes many people with various skills to make a breed association work. One of these impactful people who have had a significant positive influence on both the American Simmental Association (ASA) and the entire beef industry is Steve McGuire.
Although, many people may not be familiar with him—among other responsibilities during his 46-year career—he has overseen ASA’s database, registration department, and computer system. In addition, he has twice severed as the association’s acting breed executive, and currently also serves as chief operating officer.
This past year, he completed what was arguably the most complicated database job a breed association ever tackled. When International Genetic Solutions (IGS) moved to a pooled weekly analysis, where data automatically uploaded from the 12 participating breed associations, it was McGuire who merged the databases. It involved developing a universal numbering system that superseded the registration numbers, and the development of a portal to automatically upload the data from each association every week. One of the most difficult tasks was identifying animals in multiple databases, which would tie the analysis together.
McGuire found great disparity on the same animal in different herdbooks in terms of name, birth date, etc. This took a tremendous amount of time sorting through the data to identify these animals to tie the herdbooks together. Without his phenomenal effort, the IGS analysis would not be what it is today.
McGuire has been with the association for 46 of the 51 years it has been in existence. Amazingly, he has worked for every breed executive ASA has had including Don Vaniman, Earl Peterson, Brian Kitchen, Jerry Lipsey, and Wade Shaffer. These executives owe a debt to McGuire for their unusually long tenure.
Typically, the No. 1 reason a breed executive gets let go has to do with the database and computer system. In the end, a breed association’s primary purpose is to maintain the herdbook and database. However, when breed associations update their computer systems, it typically takes twice as long to complete, and cost is twice as much as was budgeted. When these problems occur, it is generally the executive who takes the fall from this predictable problem.
The one notable exception is ASA. The association has gone through several computer system changes and has always brought in a high-quality system on time and on budget. This has no doubt extended the careers of the various executives who have served the ASA.
Don Vaniman first hired McGuire in 1973. ASA was pioneering computer use and using punch cards. The cards were then flown to Boeing Aircraft each weekend to process the work. If there was one punch card with an error, the work group wouldn’t run. Always moving forward, they were starting to collect a small mountain of punch card workgroups with errors. Steve was tasked with going through each workgroup to find the problem so it could be rerun.
Vaniman remembers, “After a while, you get a feel for who will work out and who won’t. After interviewing Steve, I knew I had the one I wanted.”
McGuire was still an engineering student at Montana State University, so for the first two years he only worked part-time. Vaniman remembers in the interview, “He had on an old wool jacket and a beard but showed up to work clean shaved and with a tie on.”
McGuire credits Vaniman for his career at ASA. He reflected that working for a breed association was not a career he had envisioned, but after being exposed to Vaniman, he could see that it was purposeful work. McGuire credits Vaniman with instilling in him the vision that the beef industry could make more progress through objective selection. He quickly came to enjoy working for an organization that was open to new technology.
Under the next breed executive, Earl Peterson, the computer system was brought in-house. With it being overseen by McGuire, it was brought in on time and on budget. Peterson summed up McGuire’s contribution: “We were very fortunate to have him. We simply couldn’t fail (on the new computer system). McGuire not only contributed to the association’s success, but also its lack of failure. He had the time, energy and foresight—call it genius if you want to—to see the project through. Two words I would use to describe him are ‘preserved and prevailed.’ I tip my hat to him.”
When Brian Kitchen took over as the third paid executive, he reports, “I have nothing but good things to say about Steve McGuire—his steadfastness to make the registration process efficient and intuitive for the members made everyone’s life easier. Without a doubt, Steve knows more about cattle registry data systems than anyone in the beef industry.”
When Jerry Lipsey took over as executive after a period of turbulent times within the association, he credits McGuire with helping get things back on track.
“McGuire was proactive with the staff to help them and the association move on to better times. I relied on him. In fact, I told him that if he was going to leave, I would be right behind him locking up the doors. He meant that much to the association. Nobody was more important to ASA than Steve.”
Lipsey also said, “I don’t think there is a better person in the nation at managing a database. He is a unique, wonderfully skilled person, and what he didn’t know, he self-taught himself.”
The current breed executive is Wade Shafer, and he reports, “Steve is a key strategist who is involved in all the association’s major business decisions. He is diplomatic and often the last to speak, but when he does speak, people listen.” Shafer also said, “Though he has no formal animal breeding training, his keen intellect and insatiable curiosity have made him a critical component of our (genetic) evaluation team since we brought it in-house in 2006.”
McGuire is an extremely talented person who never seeks the limelight. However, the career he has had at ASA and IGS has impacted the seedstock industry in a profound way. He started when the industry used rudimentary punch cards and help lead it to the tremendously powerful Graphic Processing Units used today. Most importantly, his database management has made weekly runs of across-breed EPDs (expected progeny differences) possible. — Dr. Bob Hough, WLJ correspondent
