SHOW SECRETARY

Jan Nyhus

Contact Information

Phone : 515-597-3368
Email : lcnyhus@huxcomm.net
Website : None

About Jan Nyhus

I didn't know a thing about pigeons until I married Lloyd. He didn't have birds when we met, but he had raised them for years from the time he was around 12. His first loft was an old piano crate. We didn't own our own home until 3 years after we married. The first thing Lloyd did was build a loft and start buying birds. Lloyd and I were living in Sioux Falls , South Dakota at the time and we immediately joined the Eastern South Dakota Pigeon Club. We made lots of friends and went to several shows in the area. Lloyd did try to get me to actually raise pigeons myself. At one time I had Chinese Owls and English Trumpeters. However, due to my allergies and the start of asthma, my time in the loft quickly came to an end.

After moving to Iowa and settling in Huxley, Lloyd again built another loft. Fantails have always been his bird of choice, so we got involved with the Mid America Fantail Club and the Central Fantail Club. Our involvement in the Mid America Fantail Club brought us to the ISPA December shows in Des Moines . We joined the ISPA and tried to attend as many meetings as possible. In 2000, it was becoming obvious that Howard Hart needed some help with the Bulletins, so Lloyd and I volunteered to help him get them out. Howard would send me all of the material, I would type them up, send the typed material back to him; then he would get them printed and send them out. Somehow that progressed to having me type them up, get them printed and send them out. Next thing we knew, we had become the Publication Coordinators for the ISPA.

The first year that I helped Howard with a show, I typed up the Premium Book for him and helped him mail it out. As you know, Howard used to write every coop card by hand and type every last judging sheet on his typewriter. That year, I did labels with the exhibitor names for all of the coop cards. Then Howard just had to write the breed, sex, color and band number. The following year Greg Olson and Howard were Co-Show Secretaries and Greg got a DOS based program. Greg, his wife Lynn and I did all of the data input for that show. It was absolute chaos. For Greg and I it was really a trial by fire. We spent long hours trying to get things right and I think a lot of people, including Howard, were waiting for everything to blow up in our faces. But, we made it through that show. Definitely not without major problems, but we still made it. That was the last year that Howard was with us.