Growing up in Bellville the son of an Exxon gas exploration man and a school teacher mom, Cody Fry might easily have turned up anyplace in the professional work world.

But it was a love of animals—and, he says, a stroke of divine providence—that ultimately brought him to manage the sprawling Armstrong Ranch south of Kingsville.

"Going through A&M, probably 95 percent of the animal science majors wanted to manage a ranch, if not go to vet school," Cody says.

"That was a far away dream for me, because I was not coming from a big ranching family. I always looked at that as a dream," he says. "So I took a couple of jobs, staying with beef cattle in the feedyard sector, and luckily, by the grace of God, everything worked out great."

After finishing his master’s degree, Cody and his wife, Dawn, moved to Canada, where he worked a couple of years before returning to the states to work for a feedyard operation in Gonzales.

In 2007, Cody caught wind of a job opening down in Armstrong.

Although he was somewhat hesitant to move any further south than he was, Cody says he’s never looked back since.

Today, Cody manages a 1,500-head commercial cattle herd on the 49,000-acre Armstrong ranch, as well as tending to the day-to-day operations of the wildlife management and oil and gas interests of the place.

He also serves on the Kleberg-Kenedy County Farm Bureau board of directors, having held a similar post while he lived in Gonzales County, as well as being active with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.

Looking at the membership of such organizations, Cody notices one sure fact: "The primary hair color of many of the groups is silver."

But that steels his resolve to make service to such groups not only an honor, but his duty, he says.

And while each day on the job offers him a new learning experience, Cody says he wouldn’t have it any other way.

"The whole ranching opportunity has been a challenge," he says. "But I love a challenge. It’s something that everybody needs in their life. And you couldn’t ask for a better place to raise a family than here."