Tag: aberdeen

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Music Man

Composer and Aberdeen native John Cacavas died Tuesday, Jan. 28 at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., at age 83. During his long career in Hollywood, Cacavas scored more than 400 one-hour TV shows (including Kojak and Hawaii Five-O), 50 television movies and 15 feature films, but he got his start in the Hub City. He is survived by his wife Bonnie, also an Aberdeen native, and three daughters.

A memorial service was held in California, but local donations for the John Cacavas Memorial may be made in his honor to the Aberdeen Public School Foundation, 1224 Third St., Aberdeen, SD 57401.

In 2003, Cacavas wrote a short memoir for South Dakota Magazine. Here is his story in his own words.

MUSIC. THAT’S WHAT I DO. Compose, orchestrate, conduct and produce it. All kinds. It all began in Aberdeen in the early’40s. My hometown was musically rich with junior and high school bands, orchestras and choirs, plus the various musical organizations from Northern State College. There was a civic orchestra, a municipal band, a Shriner’s Band and about seven dance orchestras, not to mention church choirs, concerts from visiting organizations and artists and private music lessons galore.

The first phase of my musical career was a disaster. Like a lot of 11-year-olds, I took piano lessons on Saturday mornings. I was so ungifted on the keyboard that I flunked my first year and had to go to summer piano school. Regular summer school, OK, but summer piano school? It was very embarrassing, not only to me, but also to my folks. They thought maybe they were raising a real dummy. After all, there was some talent in my family. My mom played piano by ear (black keys only), and my dad was a great dancer, performing Greek dances and jitterbug routines.

When they told me I didn’t have to take lessons any more, I was relieved. Now I could play baseball with Bob Keeler’s South Side team.

But one Sunday afternoon when I was 13, my life changed forever. I went to the Capital Theater and saw a movie called”Stage Door Canteen.” Many of the nation’s big-name bands were in it — Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Guy Lombardo and others. I immediately decided that I wanted to be a saxophone player. My dad, citing my failure as a pianist, was not excited about participating in another fleeting interest. But eventually, with great reluctance, he bought me a used alto sax at Gallet’s jewelry store on south Main.

I taught myself to play the sax, and a couple of months later, as a seventh-grader at Simmons, I joined the junior high band. I had found my dream.

A year later I started my own six-piece band, and played my first professional engagement. Where? At the Moccasin recreation center for my own 14th birthday party. My mom hired me. I think my folks paid us $5 each. We knew only six songs, but it was a start.

When I was a sophomore at Central High, I had a falling out with the school’s band director. He did not approve of my being a professional, so I left the high school band. Even though I had started and was leading a terrific 16-member school dance band,”The Golden Blues,” it was not a hard decision.

We had 11 players in my new band, and we were not too bad. Life on the road appealed to me more than playing and freezing at high school football games. Besides, now I was getting paid to play. My parents backed me all the way. They bought me musical arrangements, a public address system, music stands and spotlights. Even a car and trailer.

I gradually began making musical arrangements for my band. My first efforts were not so hot, but gradually I became more proficient at the art.

While still in junior high, I had worked at our family restaurant, The Virginian, on south Main. I worked as a waiter — and later as a chef — from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekends and seven days a week during vacations. For that I got $11 a week.

One day I got a call from a local bandleader, Bill Klitz. He had an 11-piece band with a four-man sax section, and one of his sax players was ill. Could I take his place? You bet! The job was at Tacoma Park, a few miles northeast of Aberdeen. They picked me up, I played the job and I was a big hit. They even let me play a few jazz solos!

Afterwards the musicians lined up for their pay. For playing three hours and having the best time of my life, I got $14! I got home about 2 a.m. and woke my parents. I told them about my evening with the band and how much I’d been paid. My dad looked at me for a moment, and said,”I think it’s time for you to leave the restaurant business.” And I did.

My band played all the local venues, the Roof Garden (no longer there), private parties at the Alonzo Ward Hotel, the Country Club and Wylie Park, even in towns up to 200 miles away.

After high school I attended Northern State College for two years. My band prospered, and we grew in demand. I then transferred to Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., where I began writing songs for campus shows, and my life-long passion for serious music flowered.

From there I got drafted and became a music arranger for the United States Army Band in Washington, D.C. It was a great time, and I learned an awful lot. There were a few South Dakota guys in the band, and we had mini-South Dakota reunions with some fellows in a nearby Air Force Band.

After my discharge I moved to New York. I had succeeded in getting some of my works published, so I felt I was on my way. I pounded pavements, wrote jingles and songs and became a freelancer for many publishers. My first song to connect,”Over and Over,” was recorded by Guy Lombardo. He played it on the”Ed Sullivan Show.”

By this time I realized there were thousands of sax players, but not many arrangers and composers. I decided that a wonderful phase of my life was over. I sold my sax one month to pay the rent.

In New York I continued to get my school music published, did a lot of arranging and even became the second conductor at CBS, a great step upwards.

During this time I was courting an Aberdeen girl, Bonnie Becker, whose parents owned the Harbor Cafe in Aberdeen. After much persuasion, cajoling and threats, she married me. As a psychiatric social worker, she had the regular job and I was the freelancer who also did the cooking. It was a great arrangement, and one of the smartest moves of my life. After 44 years together and three wonderful kids, that ain’t bad!

Bonnie went on to become a lyric writer. After all, why not keep it in the family? After our daughters were grown, they too wrote many lyrics for publication. Bonnie also began writing cookbooks, and for the last few years has been a crisis response counselor.

After visiting another Aberdeen lad, Charles Buttz and his wife Terri, in Darien, Conn., one weekend, we decided to move there. It was a small New England town and looked like a fine place to bring up kids. I became director of publications and later acting manager of Chappell & Co., Inc., then and probably now the world’s largest music publishing house. That position and a short tenure at Bourn Music as an arranger were the only full-time jobs I ever had. Not counting my career in The Virginian, of course.

We went to London to record my first album, which turned into a love affair with that city for Bonnie and me. I still do a lot of recording in London, so we have an apartment in the city and manage to spend about three months there each year.

In 1973, Hollywood called, and we’ve been here ever since. During those three decades, I scored hundreds of movies, TV shows and albums.

I don’t think any of this good fortune would have happened without my upbringing in South Dakota. I learned real values and had the opportunity to pursue my musical dream. It was a happy and golden time.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2003 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Our Hub City

By Rebecca Johnson

Aberdeen earned the nickname Hub City in 1911 because four major railroads operated there. The old train depot at Main Street and Railroad Avenue still houses Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, but art, shopping, and health care now make up some of the spokes on Aberdeen’s hub.

My husband and I visited last November so I could attend a yoga workshop. We mainly explored downtown. First stop was Natural Abundance, the community food co-op in a corner shop on Main.”The co-op started as a private buying club in 1978 as a way to meet individuals needs for organic, whole and bulk foods,” says Lara Nelson, general manager.”Over the years it has evolved to be a full retail business.” The store has quite a variety of items — organic produce, grass-fed beef, supplements, health and beauty products are just a few. Thankfully for me, you don’t have to be a co-op member to shop there. I grabbed a kombucha and some bananas then headed to the yoga studio.

Lean Body Barre hosts a variety of hot yoga classes in what was once the Ward-Owsley candy factory.”It must have been pretty popular, because railroad tracks lead parallel to the building so that train cars could be filled,” says Candace Briscoe, building and studio owner. The doors that were used to load trains are now business entrances. Briscoe’s toxin free and organic skin care business has been there since 2004 and her yoga studio opened last fall.”I loved the detoxification aspect of hot yoga,” Briscoe says.”Although it seems as if the hot yoga business was intentionally placed because of its benefit to my other business, it wasn’t until a couple months after the studio opened that I realized the two businesses had so much in common.”

I had fun checking out Briscoe’s shop, sweating and learning with the guest teacher who taught the workshop. After a shower, my husband and I dined at Roma Ristorante Italiano. It’s located on the ground floor of the Ward Plaza, formerly Alonzo Ward Hotel. Raffi Ismaili and Tony Avdiu, half-Albanian and half-Italian cousins, opened the restaurant last February. Ismaili had been in the restaurant business for over 25 years, with restaurants in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, when Avdiu invited him to South Dakota. (Avdiu is also part owner of The Italian Garden in Brookings.) Roma offers a large selection of pasta, chicken, veal and seafood dishes. I tried the spaghetti marinara and my husband had cheese ravioli. Good food, inviting Italian dÈcor and the servers were so attentive. Our water glasses were never empty.

We explored the Ward Plaza a bit after we ate. Alonzo Ward built the hotel in 1894. Fire destroyed it in 1926, but in 1928 he built again. Blackstone Developers renovated the building in 2004 and 90 of the hotel rooms were converted into 15 luxury condominiums. The original dark woodwork in the lobby and the chandelier in the Crystal Ballroom were fully restored. Ward Plaza houses two event spaces, The Ward Plaza Bar and Grill, Karisma Boutique, and Labyrinth Films. Seven hotel rooms remain, but they’ll be remodeled into apartments later this spring.

Our next day’s lunch was at Red Rooster Coffee House, owned by siblings Dan Cleberg and Kileen Cleberg Limvere. They have a variety of sandwiches, soups and salads. We opted for the veggie burger, hummus sandwich and, of course, coffee. It was fun to relax in their mismatched, retro furniture and peruse local art on their yellow and orange walls. The Klebergs have been great leaders in Aberdeen’s cultural community by providing gallery space and hosting regular musical performances. They also sell used books and fair trade gifts like jewelry and scarves.

Last stop on our trip was the Dacotah Prairie Museum. We especially liked the Dakota Central Telephone Company and Western Union exhibit, with its realistic looking mannequins. The Lamont Gallery upstairs was a real treat, too. It features the work of local and regional artists, with six shows each year. We admired photos by Michaela Glugla then headed home, happy having explored some of Aberdeen’s great places!

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No Bucks in Aberdeen Beef?

By Cory Allen Heidelberger

This week’s bankruptcy declaration by Northern Beef Packers in Aberdeen is good news for nobody. Around 300 workers (those who survived the April layoffs) can’t get their paychecks. 277 creditors — including local contractors and beef suppliers — are left holding the bag, wondering if the Chapter 11 proceedings will shake loose any of the money NBP owes them. Livestock producers who still believe in NBP’s business model are left with one less local buyer competing for their product. A city that has bent over backwards to help NBP through its long, arduous planning and building phase with a TIF district and other help now stands with zero return on its investment.

The only good side of NBP’s bankruptcy is the opportunity for a serious conversation about at least two important questions about economic development in South Dakota:

1. Why hasn’t Northern Beef Packers succeeded? On paper, NBP proposes a business model all South Dakotans should love. NBP wants to crack the big meatpackers’ oligopoly. It wants to create an opportunity for northeast South Dakota livestock producers to sell their product locally, lowering producers’ transportation costs and boosting their profit margins. It supports the South Dakota Certified Beef program, a struggling project started by Governor Mike Rounds in 2005 to differentiate our beef in the marketplace and further boost our cattle business.

Does NBP’s failure show that there’s no beating the big packers? Does it show nobody is really that interested in beef stamped “South Dakota”? Or does it show that the folks running NBP just don’t know what they’re doing, and that an untapped opportunity awaits some savvy entrepreneur?

2. Why has the State of South Dakota given Northern Beef Packers so much help? NBP could not raise enough capital from local investors to get off the ground. The state of South Dakota had to jump start it by lining up foreign investors to pay $500,000 each in return not for profits but for green cards. (This exchange is the EB-5 Immigrant Investor program, facilitated in South Dakota by the South Dakota Regional Center, a technically private company created during the Rounds administration to manage the Governor’s Office of Economic Development’s EB-5 efforts.) For NBP alone, South Dakota has recruited 160 foreign investors who have invested $80 million dollars, without which NBP would not exist.

Is any one business in South Dakota worth that much hustle from Pierre? Is it in the state’s best interest to solicit investments in risky business ventures from outside investors who do not have to live with the local consequences of those ventures’ failures?

The immediate priority in Aberdeen should be to pay workers and creditors and minimize the economic damage. But Aberdeen and South Dakota need a longer-term conversation about prospects for the local beef market and the wisdom of state involvement in the EB-5 program and economic development.

(Say, that Rounds fellow–isn’t he running for some public office or another? Isn’t he in a position to answer questions and lead a public conversation about topics like this?)

Editor’s Note: Cory Heidelberger is our political columnist from the left. For a right-wing perspective on politics, please look for columns by Dr. Ken Blanchard every other Monday on this site.

Cory Allen Heidelberger writes the Madville Times political blog. He grew up on the shores of Lake Herman. He studied math and history at SDSU and information systems at DSU, and has taught math, English, speech, and French at high schools East and West River.

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Aberdeen’s Living Christmas Tree

Custom choral risers stacked in a Christmas tree shape were built in 1988 for Aberdeen’s first Living Christmas Tree performance. Singers have been caroling from the 20-foot structure strewn with garland and colored lights ever since. Chad Coppess took these photos at the December 1st performance. Coppess is the senior photographer at the South Dakota Department of Tourism. To view more of his work, visit www.dakotagraph.com.

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Tobacco-free Aberdeen?

By Ken Blanchard

Abraham Lincoln did not regard himself as a handsome man. Once he met a woman on horseback and paused to let her pass. She halted her mount and exclaimed”I do believe you are the ugliest man I ever saw.” Lincoln didn’t argue the point.”Madam, you are probably right, but I can’t help it.””No,” she replied,”but you might have had the decency to stay home.”

That raises a question for many of us who are not inspired when we confront a mirror. Am I committing a breach of the public peace merely by going out in public without a burlap bag over my head?

Some folks at Northern State University apparently want the campus to be declared smoke free. Smoking is currently prohibited inside all campus facilities and within fifty feet of any building. Going smoke free would ensure that no one has to tolerate even the slightest scent of tobacco anywhere on university property. Smokers wishing to enjoy their peculiar habit would have to leave campus, perhaps to walk down one of our sidewalks or sit in a public park. Of course, those venues will soon come under the scrutiny of the health police, if this has not happened already.

There are a number of reasons for territorial bans on smoking. Dense, second hand smoke may be a health risk for nonsmokers exposed to it. That is the argument for banning it in bars and other public or commercial buildings. There is no reason to believe that smoking outdoors is a threat anyone other than the smoker, but don’t we all have the right never to be irritated by anything that someone else might choose to do? Banning smoking in as many places as possible might also encourage a smoker to quit or discourage others from taking up the habit. Smokers obviously aren’t making good decisions regarding their own health. Shouldn’t those who know better use the power of law to browbeat tobacco fiends into making better decisions? After all, the wages of tobacco use raise the costs of health care for all of us.

Perhaps this thinking doesn’t go far enough. Why should the righteously svelte have to be annoyed by the sight of people who are egregiously overweight, or underweight for that matter? So far as I know, no one had yet alleged that the consumption of trans fats has any second hand effects on people pushing their forks into organic salads. Still, every extra pound adds to the national medical bill. Why not declare all public spaces closed to anyone who does not have an acceptable body mass index? That would encourage some healthy lifestyle choices.

Everyone seems to agree that we should encourage healthier living. Why let retrograde notions like personal choice and the right to be left alone stand in the way of correcting those who won’t take the hint? As for optically offensive folks like Lincoln and perhaps yours truly, we may just have to stay at home.

Editor’s Note: Ken Blanchard is our political columnist from the right. For a left-wing perspective on politics, please look for columns by Cory Heidelberger every other Wednesday on this site.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is a professor of Political Science at Northern State University and writes for the Aberdeen American News and the blog South Dakota Politics.



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Buy Local?

By Ken Blanchard

Thursday I stopped at the Farmer’s Market in downtown Aberdeen. A pleasant breeze was blowing and the stalls were buzzing with customers. I highly recommend it. Corn, green beans, and lettuce were plentiful and cheap. There were jars of delicious looking preserves and smoked chickens to be had. I picked up a couple of zucchini, an eggplant and a bag of green beans. I don’t really like zucchini and I am morally opposed to eggplant, but I like green beans! My vegetarian daughter is visiting from the Cities and I am going to roast greens and purples over charcoal.

The farmer’s market is an institution in little need of defense. Buying food that is fresh because it is locally produced, in its season, is one good way to make a memorable meal. The atmosphere at such markets is always festive and colorful, which is why they are frequently mentioned in tour guides for such faraway places as Madrid or Saint Paul. It is also a pleasure to actually meet the folks that put the seeds in the ground and pull the leafy greens out of it. What could make the experience better?

Well, you could persuade yourself that you are not just shopping wisely but also shopping virtuously. That is what the”buy local” movement is all about. It’s big in Portland, Oregon, so it must be hip. The idea goes like this: buying food locally is better for the environment and is socially responsible. Food grown locally doesn’t have to be shipped across vast distances and so doesn’t have the large carbon footprint that comes with planes, trains and big rig trucks. It is more likely to be produced by a small, independent farm rather than a gigantic agribusiness and so involves less destruction of the soil and water. Finally, it’s a simple moral choice to support local farmers rather than the national and international conglomerates that dominate the food industry.

All of that sounds good, and it may make you feel very righteous when you shop at a farmer’s market, but none of it is true. Transportation costs, including energy, are a very small portion of true costs of produce, even when the produce is shipped across hemispheres. Almost all of the energy burned and the greenhouse gases produced in food production comes at the point where the food is grown. Mother Earth doesn’t care whether this happens in a big or small farm, in Brown County or Argentina. If anything, small farms are less environmentally friendly than large ones, for the same reason that a family of four living in an apartment complex has a smaller carbon footprint than a similar family living in a small house in rural America.

I am pleased to support local farmers for the same reason that I am pleased that Gabby Douglas won the all-around gymnastics gold medal at the Olympics. Go home team! This is nothing to be ashamed of, but there is nothing morally laudable about it either. If I buy grapes grown in Chile, I am helping to raise the standard of living down there. Those folks have families to feed just like I have.

The problem with bogus claims about buying locally is that they provide absolution when a bit more soul searching and menu scrutinizing may be in order. If you really want your table to be environmentally correct, try cutting down a bit on beef. Your average cow has a carbon footprint that would shame Godzilla. It doesn’t matter whether the cow farts in Brown County or Peru. The world has a lot of grass but only one atmosphere.

Buying locally at a farmer’s market is a great way to make a good meal and meet some very fine and interesting folks. It isn’t doing anything to save the environment and it doesn’t make you a better person.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is a professor of Political Science at Northern State University and writes for the Aberdeen American News and the blog South Dakota Politics.



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Baum’s Aberdeen Oz Was a Baseball Diamond

By Bernie Hunhoff

Editor’s Note: Some of the material in this story came from the Spring 2000 South Dakota History article”Wizard Behind the Plate: L. Frank Baum, the Hub City Nine, and Baseball on the Prairie” by Michael Patrick Hearn. This story is revised from its original appearance in the May/June 2001 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Beside the immigrant drawn by free homestead land, the other”typical” settler on the Dakota frontier of 1888 was young, restless and looking to escape the maddening crowd back east. Lyman Frank Baum was the second type.

Baum found room to breathe in Aberdeen. He opened Baum’s Bazaar, and stocked it with the non-essentials of life: fancy goods, sporting equipment, toys and amateur photography supplies, among other novelties. With creative advertisements that hinted at his hitherto hidden literary talent, he pulled his customers in:

At Baum’s Bazaar you’ll find by far
The finest goods in town
The cheapest, too, as you’ll find true
If you’ll just step around

Baum believed Aberdeen would embrace such a business, for it was no one-horse prairie pothole. The Hub City was progressive — there were 20 hotels, a library, four restaurants and a half-dozen newspapers in town. Electric light service and telephones were available. With the addition of Baum’s store, Aberdeen had everything a civilized town might want or need.

Except a baseball team. An ardent”crank,” as baseball fans were then known, Baum felt the lack keenly. Less than a year after he arrived in Aberdeen, L. Frank Baum helped bring a group of local businessmen together to field a team. They were so impressed with his enthusiasm and ideas they made him secretary, responsible for the club’s day-to-day affairs. A subscription of 300 shares sold out quickly, and the Hub City Nine were on their way.

Baum’s Bazaar supplied uniforms and other equipment for the team. Players earned $50 a month plus room and board, and as a further incentive, one of the owners offered a box of cigars to the first man who hit the ball over the center field fence. After playing the likes of Groton, Redfield and Claremont, Baum managed to lure the St. Paul Indians to town for what promised to be the game of the season. The Milwaukee railroad ran three extra trains to bring fans to town. Admission was raised from 25 to 50 cents, but after some grumbling, the fans came anyway.

There was heavy rain the night before, but game day dawned bright and sunny. After playing the powerful Indians tight in the morning, losing only 2-1, the locals were thumped 17-3 in the afternoon. It hardly mattered.”(The contests) gave the public an opportunity to see what good ball playing is,” observed the Aberdeen Daily News philosophically, and just as importantly, the big gate had replenished the team’s treasury. Baseball’s future in Aberdeen seemed assured.

Hub City baseball booster L. Frank Baum.

There was only one fly in the ointment that glorious summer. At some of the games,”there was fully one-half as many people perched on the fence and on buildings and elevations surrounding as there were within the enclosure,” grumbled the Daily News. That was robbing the team of needed revenue, and while the paper implored fans to cease this”most detestable practice” in general, it took particular aim at Lester J. Ives, who owned a house near the new baseball park. It seems the enterprising Mr. Ives was selling seats on his roof for ten cents, so people could watch the games.

“The antics of this individual…have thoroughly disgusted the people without exception,” fumed the editor.”He is evidently a baseball crank — but of the hog species — without shame or self-respect.”

To counter Ives and his cheap seat”hoodlums” the ball club erected a high latticework on top of the existing fence, to obscure their view. Lester responded by putting high chairs on the ridge of the roof, which forced the management to string canvas atop the lattice. At one point the dispute got so intense that team manager Henry Marple ran a hose from the railroad roundhouse and threatened to turn it on the people engaged in their”sneaking game of looking over the fence. (If) the powerful stream [should] knock Ives & Co. from the rooftops and result in their death, over thirty of the stockholders, all business men, have guaranteed the management to stand by them and pay funeral expenses if required.”

Cooler heads, including Baum’s, prevailed before it came to that.”Mr. Ives is not so black as he has been painted,” Baum wrote following a blistering attack in the newspaper, and the whole affair was eventually settled amicably.

At least some of the displaced rooftop fans, presumably, made their way back as regular, paying customers, but not enough of them. Though the Hub City Nine was an unqualified success on the field — they reigned as the unofficial champions of North and South Dakota after defeating the best teams in both states — the club lost $1,000 that year despite the team secretary’s unstinting effort.”If we have a baseball team next year,” a disillusioned Baum said after the season,”I am of the opinion that someone else will have to do the work.”

Sadly, L. Frank Baum’s novelty store fared no better. After barely more than a year in business, it was given over to his creditors. Baum termed this a”temporary embarrassment,” but it was also fortuitous in that it turned him closer toward his true calling. He bought a newspaper, renamed it the Saturday Pioneer, and was on his way. Aberdeen liked his lively writing style, but Baum’s career as a newspaper owner was all too brief: the Pioneer died shortly after its first birthday. Health problems, coupled with the stress and worry of being a business owner, caused him to move on once again. Baum took a newspaper job in Chicago, and Aberdeen’s soon-to-be-famous crank never returned.

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Aberdeen’s Northern Lights

By Ken Blanchard

South Dakota Magazine has graciously allowed me to post my thoughts here. I will repay them now by using it to make a shameless plug. My colleague, Professor Jon Schaff, and I have been hosting a show on NSU TV for the last couple of years. The show is called Spotlight@Northern. Every two weeks we interview a guest.

The primary focus of Spotlight is politics: state, local and national; however, we have also discussed philosophy, religion, history and Christmas movies. We interviewed the Mayor of Aberdeen, Mike Levson, twice. In 2010, we interviewed two candidates for State Senate, District 3, Al Hoerth and Al Novstrup. We interviewed the three candidates for South Dakota’s at large US House of Representatives seat: Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, Kristi Noem, and independent candidate B.T. Marking.

We have hosted several of our NSU colleagues including a couple of historians, a geographer and professors of business and education. One show included a sociologist, James Seeber, and Fr. Shane Stevens of Sacred Heart Church, Aberdeen. I shouldn’t leave out our show with the student leaders of the College Democrats and College Republicans, Zachary Anderson and Kody Kyriss.

Recently we enjoyed a conversation with Peter Carrels. Pete is a resident of Aberdeen and has long been involved in local environmental issues. He current works for the Sierra Club. He gave us his take on the Hyperion refinery proposal (he wasn’t for it). We followed that by interviewing Ronald Bailey. Ron is the science correspondent for Reason Magazine, a libertarian journal. He is in favor of exploiting our oil resources and is enthusiastic about the power of technology to improve human life on planet Earth. This week, weather permitting, we will interview Peter Lawler, a conservative philosopher who is much more skeptical than about technology and the modern condition.

In addition to promoting our show, I have a point to make about life in the Rushmore State. We are blessed with a number a number of very influential individuals. Tom Daschle was Senate Majority Leader, one of the most powerful men in this powerful nation. Senator Thune is third from the top in the Republican Senate leadership. Senator Johnson and Representative Noem are important figures on the national stage.

I lived for a while in California. There, you were as likely to talk to your US Senator as you were to sit down to lunch with Arnold Schwartzenegger. In South Dakota, you have many opportunities to sit in the same room with your governor and state and national representatives. I listened to Senator Thune speak in the NSU library just last week. That is a benefit of residence in this fine state. Don’t miss it.

At the same time, technology brings the larger world to us. We interviewed Ron Bailey by means of Skype from his living room in Charlottesville, Virginia. Peter Lawler will come to us by the same means. We hope to bring many people from around the nation to converse in our NSU living room.

It is a privilege to live in South Dakota. We are a good people and we punch well above our weight in national politics. Here, the distance between the man on the street or in the field and our power brokers in Pierre or in the Washington D.C. is much easier to cross than it is for citizens in more populous states. We have lost none of that as the nation has become more interconnected. All we have lost is our isolation.

Spotlight@Northern has tried to capitalize on this situation. You can see our show on Midco channel 12 at 10 am, 2 pm and 8 pm. You can also watch all the shows online here. If you have any questions or comments, you can email us at spotlight@northern.edu.

Dr. Ken Blanchard is a professor of Political Science at Northern State University and writes for the Aberdeen American News and the blog South Dakota Politics.

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Snow Birds

By John Andrews

It’s the last week of December and South Dakotans have just celebrated their first brown Christmas in years. It looks as if a brown New Year’s is on tap. In fact the only white we may see for the next few weeks are the snowy owls that are flying further south than many people can remember.

Jim Lewandowski, the office assistant at Sand Lake National Wildlife Refuge northeast of Aberdeen, says they have seen an abundant number of snowy owls there so far this winter. Terry Jordre, a Brown County birder, told the Aberdeen American News that he’s seen plenty of the owls dotting the back roads of northern South Dakota.

Snowy owls breed on the Arctic tundra and come south during the winter in search of food. The nearly pure white birds can often be found as far south as Nebraska in winter, but this year they are flying into Kansas. Three were seen last week at a lake in Kansas City.

Experts seem to agree that the owls are venturing outside their normal range because of a food shortage. They prefer lemmings, whose populations fluctuate every three to five years. When lemmings are in short supply, owls seek out dietary supplements of rodents, rabbits, birds and fish, all of which are plentiful in South Dakota and other Great Plains states.

Unfortunately the owls have a difficult time adapting to their southern surroundings. They are used to life on the tundra, so their interactions with humans are limited. The owls aren’t used to avoiding cars, and many have been hit. Some owls are curious.”They’ll let you get close enough that they might even swoop down at your vehicle,” Lewandowski says.”They’ve done that up here.”

So if you have travel plans over the New Year’s weekend, keep your eyes peeled. You might spot a snowy owl perched on a fencepost or high in a tree near a lake or slough. The white owls will surely stand out against the browns of our snowless winter.

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Faith in the Voters

By Patrick Gallagher

South Dakota voters have enacted dozens of laws at the ballot box and challenged many more since we became the first state to adopt the initiative and referendum in 1898. We’ve nixed the inheritance tax, banned corporate hog farms, okayed a Right to Work law and said”no” to moving the University of South Dakota from Vermillion to Sioux Falls (7 percent favored the latter). Plus we’ve passed term limits, family farm acts and daylight savings time.

Some state lawmakers find the process insulting — even embarrassing — when their laws are referred and defeated by unelected common folk. Business lobbyists would clearly prefer to argue their positions in the halls of the state capitol than in 66 counties. But citizens and grassroots organizations — including some who can’t afford to send a lobbyist to Pierre — have won major victories because they collected thousands of signatures and took their ideas straight to the people.

November-style democracy was the inspiration of a feisty Catholic priest who harbored a healthy distrust of institutions and politicians. An Aberdeen fixture for a third of a century, Father Robert Haire played controversial roles in many important territorial and early statehood events. On his 70th birthday in 1915, an Aberdeen newspaper published a tribute to the pastor who was once called the Terror of all Evil-Doers:”A quarter of a century ago, Haire was one of the best loved and best hated men in the community, this because he was a pathfinder. Today, everybody loves him and looks up to him.”

Robert Haire was born in Freedom, Michigan, in 1845. His Irish Presbyterian parents named him Robert Emmet Haire after the Irish rebel Robert Emmet. As a young man he taught in a rural school near Flint and boarded with an Irish Catholic family. Inspired by their devotion, he converted to Catholicism in 1865 and later entered the seminary. He then changed his middle name to William because there’s never been a Saint Emmet. Ordained in 1874, Haire returned to Flint and developed a westward itch along with many of his parishioners. Hearing stories of prosperity in Brown County, Dakota Territory, they headed west, arriving on June 26, 1880. Haire celebrated Mass the very next day in a sod shanty. He filed a claim near Columbia and began plans for Brown County’s first Catholic church, an 18 by 45 foot sod structure.

Shortly after arriving, Haire went to Watertown to prove his claim. On July 4, 1880, he celebrated Mass in the Watertown courthouse and then stepped outside to deliver a rousing Independence Day speech, revealing his twin passions for God and country to his new neighbors.

Haire offered his services to Dakota’s pioneer bishop, Martin Marty, thus beginning a long and tense relationship. Marty assigned him a large territory running from the Minnesota border to the Missouri River and from Huron to what became the North Dakota border. Haire traveled on foot, horse, buggy, and train, celebrating Masses in homes, hotels, and railroad cars. He visited 40 to 50 stations and built churches in several communities. He took up temporary residence in Aberdeen’s Sherman House, which he referred to as”a lighthouse on the coast of hell.” His Masses in the Sherman House dining room sometimes drew as many as 150 worshippers.

In the winter of 1881-82, Haire’s sod church in Columbia caved in, so he looked to build again. That spring, the city of Aberdeen raised money to build a church but the Presbyterian minister was the first to apply so he won the funds. When Haire launched his own building campaign, both Catholics and non-Catholics donated land and money. He dedicated the new Sacred Heart Church on December 26, 1882 (the Presbyterian church wasn’t dedicated until 1883).

In 1886, Haire invited the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Fargo to help him establish a school in the church. A year later, they launched an effort to build a freestanding school. Haire helped haul lumber during the construction. The three-story Presentation Academy of the Sacred Heart opened in 1888.

Haire also recruited the Knights of Labor, a national organization made up mostly of Catholics. The Knights of Labor was viewed with suspicion by the Church hierarchy until Pope Leo XIII gave his approval. Eventually Haire became the Knights’ state leader and newspaper editor. His early political activism also included the Dakota Farmers Alliance, formed in reaction to farmers’ sense of mistreatment at the hands of politicians, corporations and railroads. As Dakota Territory moved toward statehood (Haire was a delegate to a statehood convention), the Alliance attacked Gov. Arthur Mellette for being too friendly with the railroads. Still, Mellette later appointed Haire to the state board of charities and corrections.

Haire helped form the Alliance’s political wing, the Independent Party. Eventually becoming the Populist Party, it focused on regulating railroads, coinage of silver, and democratic reforms like the initiative and referendum. Haire is considered the originator of the American initiative and referendum process; he advocated for the idea several years before it became part of the Populist Party platform in 1890.

His political philosophy and his distrust of politicians led to his desire to create a way for people to propose laws without interference by elected representatives. He laid out his thoughts in an 1891 issue of the Dakota Ruralist:”These men make the laws to suit themselves — are a law to themselves. The people seldom get any law passed they want.”

Plutocrats resisted his proposal and he quickly refuted their arguments.”Of course, the entire plutocracy, given over to fleecing the values that labor produces, are afraid of the people,” Haire contended.”Such fellows will jump on any proposition with both feet when it is proposed to give the law-making power into the hands of the electors.” Nonetheless,”the people are capable of feeling for, giving form to, and finally decreeing their own laws.”

He described his program that would replace the legislature with a system for popularly proposed legislation:”any law that has been demanded by 25 percent or more of the precincts of the state shall be drafted and printed,” and distributed statewide. On the first Monday after the fourth of July,”the electors in their several precincts, shall either confirm or reject said law, using the Australian voting system. If a law passes, it is law. If it does not get a majority of the whole state electorate, it is no law.”

It wasn’t until 1898, during the re-election of South Dakota’s only Populist governor, Andrew E. Lee, that the initiative and referendum appeared on the state ballot as a constitutional amendment. The amendment passed easily, making South Dakota the first state in the nation to give voters such power.

“…Haire was one of the best loved and hated men in the community, this because he was a pathfinder.”

The initiative and referendum has become common in American democracy. Twenty-six other states have adopted one or both procedures. Since the first use of the initiative in Oregon in 1904, voters across the United States have considered about 2,300 statewide initiatives, approving 41 percent.

Despite the relatively infrequent use of initiatives in South Dakota, critics charge that it’s too easy to get issues on the ballot. By law, petitioners must collect signatures from 5 percent of the voters in the last gubernatorial election. Gov. Peter Norbeck raised the concern as early as 1917, but legislative efforts to increase the number of signatures needed to put a measure on the ballot have been rejected in statewide elections. During one legislative session, a proposal that would have required the requisite signatures from at least 33 counties was defeated when arguments arose over the”one-man, one-vote” principle. Shouldn’t two signatures from Mitchell count just as well as a signature from Eureka and another from Ipswich?

David Owen of Sioux Falls, president of the South Dakota Chamber of Commerce and Industry, has worked to both support and defeat ballot initiatives. He believes the process needs”respectful reform” and he lobbied successfully in the 2009 legislative session for several changes. Owen believes South Dakotans like the grassroots initiative process but he also thinks they’re put off by the”commercialization” that’s developed around the process, in which consultants and signature-gathering firms sell their services to interest groups.†

Before the initiative and referendum were approved, Haire served on the Board of Regents during some tumultuous years. Gov. Lee thought there were enough colleges in the state, but Haire believed at least one more was needed in Aberdeen. The governor vetoed the first attempt to create a”normal school” there, but later acquiesced. Northern Normal and Industrial School opened in 1901, and Haire received much credit. A memorial to him stands on the Northern State University campus, a rare tribute to a man of the cloth on a public campus.

By the time the college was formed, however, he wasn’t exactly a man of the cloth. Years earlier, his activism had put him in conflict with Bishop Marty. One of Haire’s earliest causes was temperance. He spoke around the state in support of a prohibition clause in the state constitution. While Bishop Marty shared Haire’s disdain for alcohol, he preferred to leave state regulation out of it. Others also disagreed with Haire. In 1888, the Aberdeen News reported that some of his parishioners were petitioning to get him removed, noting that,”this attack was conceived in the late Brewers convention in St. Paul.” Haire confronted them directly. During a Sunday mass, he asked those present who supported him to stand. The”congregation rose en masse.”

Haire was perhaps more directly antagonizing to his bishop when he launched Dakota’s first Catholic newspaper, the Dakota Catholic American. In the first issue in 1887, editor Haire wrote:”In politics we will be strictly non-partisan. In religion we will be what our name indicates. In economic measures we will be for the right. We have the approbation of our good father, Our Bishop Marty. Thus fortified, we cannot fail.” The good father’s approbation failed rather quickly. Future issues betrayed Haire’s politics, and Bishop Marty shut the paper down in November 1888.

Haire’s progressively radical politics probably sealed his fate. The Aberdeen News reported on a lecture he gave in 1888:

[Fr. Haire] emphatically declar[ed] that the time had come when the laboring masses would have possession, and if this could not be secured in any other way a bloody rebellion would certainly be the result. He said, also, that he was getting very tired of this representative form of government, but hoped with all his heart for the time to come when the old Puritan democracy principles would rule the nation; when the laws would be framed by the people themselves and not by a few pinheads and trading representatives of the Vanderbilt-Gould type.†

Bishop Marty soon traveled to Aberdeen and ordered Haire transferred to Wakonda in southeast South Dakota. When Haire declined the bishop dismissed him. He remained a priest, but could no longer serve as a parish pastor or administer sacraments.

Haire’s punishment weighed heavily on him. He later told a friend,”Do you know what has kept me in the church in spite of my exceeding bitterness against the bishop? It is the Blessed Sacrament. When I kneel before the altar, I seem to hear a whisper, ëStay a little longer. All will be well.’ And so I hang on in spite of everything.”

In religious exile, Haire grew more involved in politics. He took an active part in the Fusion Party, the coalition of Populists, Democrats, and Silver Republicans (Republicans who left their party to support coinage of silver) that elected Gov. Lee in 1896. Soon thereafter, however, Haire saw the coalition fragmenting and vented his disappointment. In speeches at Fusion Party meetings in 1898, he alternately raged at his comrades and called for harmony

Eventually, however, Haire began to step away from the state stage. He was a Socialist presidential elector in 1900, and in 1902, the Socialists nominated him for the U.S. Senate. Otherwise he seemed to be more interested in his local Socialist meetings, where he was recognized as a mentor according to a tribute published by the South Dakota Socialist Party after his death:”During the earlier years of the organization, he seldom missed a meeting, always taking a leading part, but gradually teaching us to think and speak for ourselves. Later on, he would take no part unless we seemed to be drifting from Marxian principles when he would set us right.”

Despite Haire’s challenges and successes in public affairs, there was a hole in his life. When Bishop Thomas O’Gorman replaced Bishop Marty, Haire submitted his case for reinstatement. O’Gorman asked Haire to make a 30-day retreat and a confession. When Haire complied in 1902, the bishop assigned him as chaplain to the Presentation Sisters and their new St. Luke’s Hospital in Aberdeen. He served there for the remainder of his life.

In January 1916 he wrote to his brother,”My own health is on the down grade, yet no grippe.” On March 4, 1916, he celebrated Mass and then went to his room. He fell ill and reportedly called for a local Baptist minister who had been a Socialist comrade, but the friend arrived too late.

Bishop O’Gorman presided at the funeral in the Sacred Heart Church that Haire had built three decades earlier. Both former Gov. Lee and Socialist leader Eugene Debs sent notes. Debs wrote,”Father Haire was a true follower of the Judean Carpenter. He gave all he had, and best of all, he gave himself to the poor. But he not only sympathized with the poor, he told them why they were poor and how they might put an end to their poverty.”

A newspaper profile after Haire’s death related a telling story. Haire and a parishioner were approached on an Aberdeen street by a vagrant who successfully solicited a dollar from the pastor. The parishioner scolded,”That bum’ll probably get drunk on your dollar.” Haire replied,”Let’s give the poor fellow the benefit of the doubt. If he was indeed hungry — and I believe he was — how would I have squared myself with the Giver of all good things had I refused him?”

A few months after Haire’s death, Bishop O’Gorman penned a fitting epitaph:”He had been in earlier years, when the State was still in the pioneer stage, a most zealous missionary. I believe that the last ten peaceful years of his life and his happy death were rewards of the good and fruitful work of the early years.”

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Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the September/October 2009 issue of† South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.