Don Shepard of Turley, Okla., was an All-American distance runner for Howard Payne who excelled at the two-mile run. In 1958, he was captain on the second-place Lone Star Conference track team and then set the NAIA record in the two-mile run in the national championships, beating the old record by 10 seconds. He was also part of the 1956 two-mile relay team that set a Kansas Relays record. In the last Texas Conference Championship meet in 1956, Shepard scored 16 ¾ points, winning the mile and half mile and running the championship mile relay team. He was second in the high jump and long jump. Shepard was named “Mr. Howard Payne” by fellow students in his senior year in 1958. After graduation, he worked for the Texas Youth Commission in Brownwood and Giddings and was a former superintendent of the West Texas Children’s Home in Pyote. Shepard also operated a water well service, was a farmer and rancher, manager of the Cisco Chamber of Commerce and a board member of the Leon-Bosque Soil Conservation District. Howard Payne’s baseball field, Don Shepard Park, is named after him. He died in 1991.