I went down to Atlanta as a correspondent for Life magazine and worked on a series about segregation. It came out in the fall of ’56, just as the first schools in the South were integrating as a result of court orders. I became the bureau chief about a year later, at which point I finally had an office and a place where I could put things. Sort of decorate it. That’s when I bought the first couple of cows. They were china, or porcelain-like. People would come to my office and see that I had cows, and after that the gifts started and never really stopped. The variety was amazing. One of them was a 3-foot-tall Holstein made of wood; the ears got knocked off of that one at some point.
Why cows? Over the years I’ve asked myself that same question. The violence I’ve witnessed, the racism, the inequality, the aftermath of lynchings—cows are the antithesis of that. They’re quiet and good-natured. They do nothing but help mankind eat and drink and dress themselves. They’ll never hurt you. But it’s also that I came from a small town in Kansas, and I visited farms as a kid with my twin brother, Jim. When we first started going to this one particular farm, the farmers showed us how to milk the cows, and they would squirt the warm milk into our mouths.
This feeling about cows being both soothing and beautiful has always been there for me. And I make no attempt to disguise it. Something comforting. I guess that’s the best word I can think of.
~ Richard Stolley, founding editor, People magazine; while at Life magazine, Stolley was the journalist who tracked down the “Zapruder film” of the John F. Kennedy assassination; Santa Fe, NM