James William Dalbey

Jim Dalbey, 73, died Monday, July 13, 2026, following a car accident earlier that day. Let’s not focus on the details of Jim’s death but instead on his life.

Jim was so much more than he allowed the world to see. He was whip smart. He was the only one of the seven Dalbey kids who willingly took all four years of both high school math and science. His grades were good, too.

In fact, the only class in high school that bedeviled him was typing. He missed the home row because he was showing his steer at the Interstate 4-H show in St. Joseph, and keystrokes after that were sacrificed to the Ak-Sar-Ben livestock show in Omaha and the American Royale. The Northwest Missouri State Fair at Bethany may have also interfered with the school calendar.

Jim took trigonometry, calculus, physics, and all those other smart-kid classes while galavanting around at cattle shows but kept up because learning came so easily to him. But typing? Well, that was a fair tradeoff for the lifelong friends he made and the life lessons he learned in the show ring.

In the 1970s, Jim was chosen for the showmanship contest at the National Junior Angus Show in Lexington, Kentucky, which was and still is a big deal. Kids from all over North America meet as strangers at competitions like this, but a world opens that introduces them to people who aren’t like anyone they’ve ever known. Jim came back home with a Canadian accent and, more abstractly, was worldlier than he’d been 10 days before.

It was one of many experiences showing cattle that helped shape his sense of right and wrong, taught him how to win and, just as important, how to finish second, third or near the bottom with grace, and gave him values that later guided his farming and cattle operation.

As a young man, Jim could have gone to college and excelled in any field he chose, as a scientist or engineer, or — and this may surprise some people — even a poet or essayist.

In that important way, it is a pity that Jim never learned the home row or mastered typing, as it would surely have made it easier for him to share one of his great gifts. His mother recognized in high school that he had a talent for writing after he had perfectly described a moment in nature in an English paper.

Much later in life, he hunted and pecked his way through richly detailed short stories that may or may not have made his writer and journalist sister just a little jealous that she hadn’t written them herself.

But, seriously, these reflections on community life told from the perspective of tomcats or tractors or whatever fancy entered his mind that day were very, very good. It is a great injustice that more people didn’t have the privilege of reading his absolutely delightful prose.

Instead of enrolling in college after he graduated from West Nodaway High School in 1971, Jim remained on the farm and worked alongside his father, George, in the row crop and Angus cattle operations, and assisted in the care of his mother, Betty, in her final years.

Betty loved her chocolate pie-eyed Jim completely — perhaps not more, but differently than his siblings. There was always something chocolate around because, besides matching his eyes, it was his favorite flavor on Earth. And as for corn, it was a staple because it was the only vegetable Jim would eat. Some of his siblings may have had enough corn in their childhoods to last their entire lifetimes. If it made Jim feel special and remarkable in a household where a new kid came along every year or so, it’s all good.

Jim stayed on the farm after his mother passed away in 1978. He was that kind of son, that kind of brother. Betty’s death profoundly affected Jim in lasting ways he was too reserved to fully express. If Jim yearned for more, he didn’t complain. He should have, if we’re being honest here.

Jim’s siblings know he did the best that he could, better than anyone could have done under difficult and heartbreaking circumstances. It is sad to us that he never forgave himself for things that never needed to be forgiven in the first place. He leaves with our unshakable love and respect.

Yet his life was full of great moments.

Although he didn’t have framed degree certificates on the wall to prove it, Jim did become a scientist — a good one.

Angus cattle were Jim’s passion. He knew how to pick them and how to breed for them. The bloodlines of his herd were etched in his memory, at least as far back as that grand champion heifer from the 1960s and 1970s — you know the one.

He remembered who each animal’s sire and dam were and could trace the bloodlines far back in their long pedigrees. This level of detail included anecdotes long gone from others' memories but that helped inform his life’s work, as they would any scientist’s. These stories always had a point, even if it didn’t immediately seem clear.

There was a point, for example, in the vividly detailed stories of Mankiller I and Mankiller II, half-sisters who had the genetics to be champion heifers but who never completely yielded to the show halter and bruised Dalbey kids’ shins too many times to count.

The point was to breed out that trait.

There was an elegant simplicity to it for those with the patience to listen, and it was others’ great loss if they lacked it.

Jim was an early user of AI, back when all it stood for was artificial insemination. He remained current with the science throughout his career as a premier Angus breeder, choosing genetics for the future and using the technologies available to make calving season more predictable and less stressful for cows and calves.

Like any good researcher, he pored over the sire directory, finding just the right bull with a history of siring calves whose lower birth weights were easier on cows but also whose progeny had a documented higher rate of gain.

The steaks and burgers at the butcher shop are better because of science like this. Jim could tell you the genetic nuances of why your steak has just enough marbling to make it tasty and juicy and not so much that it’s swimming in fat. Suffice to say, if you never tasted the proof in a ribeye or T-bone from a Dalbey-produced Angus steer, you missed out.

One of the great things Jim did in his life was make it possible for a new generation to get started in the business — something that can be nearly impossible for young farmers without multigenerational wealth or an already established family operation.

If Colt McIntyre, Jim’s business partner, picked up even a fraction of what Jim taught him, he will continue the generations-long Dalbey tradition of fine Angus cattle. More important, Colt gave Jim great purpose and dignity. Where Jim’s siblings are concerned, Colt counts as family.

Small moments made Jim happy, too.

He took great pride in a restored 1960s vintage International Harvester tractor that he drove in the Burlington Junction Fall Farmers Festival and on a few tractor parades.

And in a bit of kismet that reminds us that we’re all connected, on the day Jim died, Rod Damewood picked up a classic John Deere tractor that had belonged to Jim’s late brother Dave. Jim told Dave’s son, Jeff, that if he would find someone to drive it in his dad’s name at the fall festival on Sept. 12, he would pay to have it painted.

These tractor promenades may sound foreign to people who grew up outside of rural America. Part pageantry and part power, they symbolize pride in an industry that sustains so many communities like Burlington Junction. These shared experiences build deep connections among neighbors, reinforcing a unique sense of togetherness and mutual support.

So many people in the greater Burlington area looked out for Jim as his health declined. It was comforting to know there were so many people in town who had his back — the women who run the Kiss My Grits Cafe and their regulars, and others who paid attention when something didn’t seem right.

Jim would tell you that of all his brothers and sisters, Linda was his angel over these last many months of hospitalizations. It is an indisputable fact, so hold her extra close in your hearts, please. She is unequivocally the best.

Jim was a plainspoken man who lived plainly. He had little tolerance for dishonesty and would tell you about it if you tried to pull a fast one over him. He was blunt at times and at others could make his point without a word. He had valuable things to say, and they deserved to be heard.

He was a good man. Remember him kindly and well.

Before we say goodbye, here’s a story about Jim you likely haven’t heard:

One of the absolute neatest things about Jim is that he regularly had “flying dreams” as a kid and, hopefully, as an adult. He painted a beautiful word picture in the telling of this recurring dream and of the peace he felt in flight. Think of that now, of Jim flying home to the gentle embrace of all of the people he has loved and lost.

Life is beautiful for him there.

Visitation will be from 5 to 7 p.m., Monday, July 20, at Bram Funeral Home, 206 E South Hills Drive, Maryville.

The funeral will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday, July 21, at the funeral home, with burial following in Ohio Cemetery in Burlington Junction. Lunch will be served by the Methodist Women’s Fellowship.

Jim wasn’t a fancy man, so don’t feel as if you need to go out and get something new for his funeral. Jeans or whatever you’re most comfortable in is fine and, he made clear, preferred.

The son and fifth child of George A. and Betty Marie (Lewis) Dalbey, James William Dalbey was born on April 21, 1953, in Maryville, Missouri. He lived his entire life in Burlington Junction, where he carried on the family legacy of raising purebred Angus cattle.

His parents, older brother Dave Dalbey, and his “other mother,” Estle Dalbey, preceded him in death. He is survived by another brother, John (Jessie) Dalbey, of Corvallis, Montana, and four sisters, Carol (David) Bronson, of Sawyer, Kansas; Marie Dalbey, of Lee’s Summit, Missouri; Beth Dalbey, of Des Moines, Iowa; and Linda (Greg) Parker, of rural Skidmore, Missouri.

He is also survived by 14 nieces and nephews and numerous great-nieces and nephews; his sister-in-law Becky Dalbey, of Burlington Junction; paternal cousins Doris Hagey, of Burlington Junction, and Adele Dickerson (Dan Roller), of Midway, Kentucky; and maternal cousins Don Michael Lewis, David Lewis and Dan Lewis, all of Texas, and Robert Lewis, of Shawnee, Kansas.

He was a 1971 graduate of West Nodaway R–1 High School and a lifelong member of the American Angus Association.