Tag: catholic

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Grottos of South Dakota

By Michael Zimny

The Midwest was host to a unique folk art movement in the early 20th century, as German-American Catholics brought with them the grotto tradition. There are two small grottos in South Dakota, on opposite ends of the state: Saint Peter’s in Farmer, and Saint Martin’s in Oelrichs.

The Midwestern grotto tradition was kickstarted by Father Paul Dobberstein with the Grotto of the Redemption in West Bend, Iowa. Near-death experiences are a common theme in grotto-building origin stories. Father Dobberstein promised the Virgin Mary that if he survived a bout with pneumonia, he would build one. And he did. In 1894, he built a small grotto, Our Lady of Lourdes, at the Saint Francis de Sales Seminary outside Milwaukee.

He wasn’t done though. He began to amass a collection of boulders for his magnum opus, which he began in 1912 and continued until his death in 1954. A parishioner named Matt Szerence helped him from the start, continuing also until his death in 1959.

The two artists often made excavation runs to the Black Hills, returning with rocks removed by miners or railroads. They studded the surfaces with colorful minerals, gemstones, petrified wood and glass. The Grotto of the Redemption is actually a series of nine grottos that tell the Catholic story of Redemption, beginning with the Fall of Man and culminating with the Resurrection.

Perhaps the second most famous Midwestern grotto is the Dickeyville Grotto and Shrines, built by Father Matthias Wernerus in the eponymous small Wisconsin town between 1925 and 1930. Probably inspired in part by Dobberstein’s work, Dickeyville is a tribute to God and country, combining patriotic and religious themes. With his splashy use of color — utilizing semi-precious stones, glass and pottery shards — Wernerus prefigured later religious folk artists, working in different mediums, like Howard Finster at Paradise Gardens or Leonard Knight at Salvation Mountain.

The South Dakota grottos are neither as grand in scale as the Grotto of the Redemption, or as visually frenetic as Dickeyville.

Saint Martin’s in Oelrichs is the most austere, relying less on colorfully ornamented concrete, and more on the stone bounty of the Southern Black Hills to recreate a naturalistic cavern for the Virgin Mary. Father Gerhard Stakemeir, another German American priest, built the icon between 1932 and 1934, with help from parishioner Nick Bogner. According to the National Register of Historic Places, Stakemeir and Bogner utilized, “petrified wood and moss, and fossils taken from Wind Cave National Park.

“The car tunnels leading through Wind Cave National Park were being enlarged in the late 1920s and early 1930s, which left vast amounts of debris … Bogner used a trailer and his Buick to haul the rocks from the passes to aid Father Stakemeir’s project.”

The bells no longer ring at Saint Martin’s, which closed as a church in 1999, a victim of rural decline. The property owner maintains the grotto, which receives few visitors.

Father Peter Scheier built the Byzantine-style Saint Peter’s grotto in Farmer between 1926 and 1933. Scheier may have been more influenced by his contemporaries in West Bend and Dickeyville than Father Stakemeir was at Oelrichs. The facade of the turrets and walls at Farmer are decoratively studded with thousands of fresh-water seashells and shards of colored glass, among the gathered stones. Like Stakemeir, and even Paul Dobberstein, Scheier made excursions to the Black Hills to gather materials. The Farmer grotto is cherished by alums and locals, some of whom took part in a restoration project in the early 2000s.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but Lemmon’s Petrified Wood Park — one of South Dakota’s great folk art monuments, which could be seen as a secular take on the grotto movement, in which fossils and stone foster the contemplation of deep time (or at least put Lemmon on the map) rather than the glorification of God — was built during the peak of the Midwestern grotto-building era (1930-1932).

In its grandiosity of scale, Ole Quammen’s Petrified Wood Park shares more in common with the Grotto of the Redemption or Dickeyville than Stakemeir’s or Scheier’s smaller icons, nearly swallowed by the prairie and demography.

Saint Martin’s and Saint Peter’s remain modest reminders of an interesting moment in sacral folk art.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Risen from Ashes

The first settlement in the Dimock area was in 1879, when a large group of German immigrants came from Wisconsin to South Dakota. They built a wooden church to accommodate their Catholic community, but in 1908 the church was destroyed by fire. The current Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church was built of lasting brick and stone in its place. The magnificent chapel, consecrated in October of 1909, is adorned with stained glass and canvas murals sent from Germany. Photos by Dan Ray.

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Abandoned, Not Forgotten

Dan Ray shared recent photos of the former St. Mary’s convent and school just south of the tiny town of Zell. The convent was built in 1883 and is the mother site of the Benedictine Sisters in South Dakota, invited to the area by Bishop Martin Marty OSB, the Vicar Apostolic of Dakota Territory. Bishop Marty asked the sisters to open a school for parish children in 1886. An addition was built in 1912 and the sisters began farming the surrounding land in 1915 to support the school. The school eventually closed in 1963 and the 7-acre campus, which includes a church, two rectories and a small cemetery, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. The site is now privately owned.

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No Limit to the Fun

By Lee Schoenbeck

The Benedictine sisters of Mother of God Monastery have been embracing life on the prairie in South Dakota for over 100 years — a little longer than South Dakota’s most popular game bird, the Chinese Ringneck Pheasant. Being that steeped in South Dakota history, it should come as no surprise that their activities include hosting an annual pheasant hunt. This year’s September hunt, the sisters’ eleventh foray into the charity ringneck hunting world, was again held at Oak Tree Lodge near Clark, South Dakota. That the local business community and faithful would support the sisters and the good works they do by participating in the event should also come as no surprise.

MOTHER OF GOD

The Benedictine sisters have a rich history, reaching back to Italy in 529 A.D., with a focus on life organized about the Rule of Saint Benedict. The Rule, a guide for organizing a Christian community around the precepts of work and prayer, continues to direct the Benedictines to this day. The sisters made their way to South Dakota, near Zell, in 1874 — a full forty-five years before the first ringneck season. In 1967 the sisters established a convent in Watertown, on a hill overlooking the Sioux River. Today, Mother of God is home to 54 sisters.

Through the years their mission has changed. In the early years their focus was on education and health care. Several of the participants in the Nun Hunt were the beneficiaries of Benedictine religious education. (Full disclosure: this writer was educated by these nuns at St. Otto’s in Webster.) A major focus of the sisters today is the Benedictine Multicultural Center, a facility aimed at encouraging understanding of our area’s many cultures, and providing assistance to those newer South Dakotans that may be in need and find navigating South Dakota a little challenging.

OAK TREE LODGE

The Makens’ family roots at Oak Tree only reach back to 1901, making them the younger South Dakota members of this nun-pheasant-landowner partnership. While the family makeup there has changed through the decades, Bill Makens is the current patriarch. He started making the move back to South Dakota, and Oak Tree Lodge, in 1998. The Makens family are dedicated and faithful Catholics, who host this hunt as one way to participate in their faith. The patriarch, Bill, had a long history of fundraising for Catholic schools in the Twin Cities, so the Nun Hunt was a natural fit.

THE HUNT

The Nun Hunt takes place at the Oak Tree hunting preserve northeast of Clark. Over thirty hunters and a pack of trained hunting dogs partake in the hunt. Oak Tree’s hunting ground is in close proximity to its lodge, and the layout shows a love and attention to hunting and the husbandry potential of the land. Oak Tree’s 8,000 acres are dotted with food plots, sloughs and standing bean and corn fields. It is a hunter’s dream land, because it has been designed to be a pheasant’s dream land.

While challenged this year with winds of over twenty miles per hour, the hardy crew harvested 62 pheasants — and all the fun that was legal to have. While the wind makes the hunting more challenging, no South Dakotan ringneck chaser would allow limits on the fun at a Nun Hunt.

THE SOCIAL

The hunters that come to the Nun Hunt enjoy the hunt, the outdoors and the camaraderie — but they also understand that the event is about raising funds to help the sisters continue their ministries, and the hunters are fully invested in that cause. Like all good charity events, there is an auction. Auctioneers Randy and Chris Owen donate their services, bringing both a humorous and ecumenical flair to the hunt. For example, while raising one’s own bid is frowned upon at most auctions, it may be the norm at the Nun Hunt!

On one occasion, local OB/GYN hunter, Dr. Flaherty, raised his bid after winning in exchange for a hug from the sister assisting with the auction. A successful hunter, at this auction, is likely to come home with a basket of nun-baked bread and sister-pickled preserves. The only rain that falls on this event is the inevitable ability of the Vikings to lose on the Sunday of the Nun Hunt, but there are some things even the Sisters’ good cheer and preserves can’t remedy.

GOOD THINGS HAPPEN FOR A GOOD CAUSE

Outside of South Dakota, it probably seems a little odd for a pacifist group of prayerful ladies to raise money with Mr. Remington’s finest, but here it makes perfect sense. The sisters, the ringnecks, and the landowning Makens have deep roots in our state. A day in the field hunting pheasants is among the finest blessings to bestow upon a South Dakota hunter — well, a hunter from anywhere, for that matter. The sisters caring for our people, birds that inspire our state, and the landowners that create the habitat for those birds all nurture parts of what is best about life in South Dakota. When all these come together for a good cause, many good things happen — and, well, that’s why there’s no limit on a Nun Hunt: because the nuns have never put a limit on the good they would do for those they have touched along their journey here at home in South Dakota.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.


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Potato Soup for the Soul

By Ruth Steil


Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the January/February 2010 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

Soup suppers are popular fundraisers for churches and other organizations in South Dakota. A bowl of hot soup on a cold day warms body and soul. But it’s not just the food that attracts people; the aura of fellowship and community also beckons.

Such events are often called soup kitchens in southeast South Dakota. One of the oldest is held every fall at St. Agnes of Sigel, a small Catholic parish of 40 families near Utica. The tradition started as a chicken dinner in the 1950s before the parish hall even had plumbing.”Water was hauled to the back door by a water truck,” said longtime member Catharine Hunhoff.”When we needed hot water we had to heat it.”

The chicken dinner, called a bazaar, took considerable preparation.”Everybody brought six or seven fried chickens, potatoes, pies and salads,” she said. Besides sharing a fried chicken dinner and real mashed potatoes, parishioners and guests played bingo and other games and shopped at tables of homemade baked goods and fancy work.”We made some money back then, but it was done more as a social event,” Hunhoff said. Gradually, interest died out and in 1984 the chicken dinner became a soup kitchen.

The members of Sigel’s Altar Society organize the fall soup event, but everyone in the parish works together to make it a success.”The men help just as much as the women,” said Hunhoff. Even the children help by cleaning tables, running errands and operating a cake walk.

The menu includes potato, chicken noodle and chili soups, taverns, hot dogs, chili dogs, homemade pies and desserts. A system has developed through the years. Parishioners meet at dawn at the parish hall to brown hamburger and peel potatoes. Thirteen Altar Society members bring a gallon of chicken broth and the deboned meat from two chickens for the chicken noodle soup. The remaining Society members make a monetary donation for the chili supplies. One Society lady grinds the carrots and celery for the chicken and potato soup. Hunhoff chops the onions — several bags of them.”Some people don’t like the job, but it doesn’t bother me.”

The recipes for the soup supper, many contributed by older church members, are kept in a special recipe box in the parish hall.”They may have been revised some over the years,” said Hunhoff.”Especially the chili and taverns since everybody has a different idea of what tastes better.”

As many as 300 people attend.”People like to come and visit, said Hunhoff.”They see people they don’t get to see often.” Charlie Wagner attends every year even though he moved to Yankton in 1974.”I go to see old neighbors,” he said.”I always find it warm and welcoming.”

Sigel Potato Soup

Recipe by Mary Ann Kathol

8 cups diced potatoes
4 cups water
1/2 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup diced carrots
1/4 teaspoon white pepper
2 teaspoons chicken stock base
3 cups milk
2 cups thickening agent (recipe to follow)
1/2 cup butter or margarine

Cook potatoes, onion, celery, carrots, pepper and chicken stock base in water until vegetables are tender. Mash to desired consistency. Add milk and blend well. Then stir in thickening agent and butter or margarine. Continue to stir over low heat until thickened.

Thickening Agent:

4 cups powdered milk
1 cup flour
1 stick softened butter or margarine

Blend well with whisk. Extra thickening agent can be frozen for later use.


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What’s the Limit on a Bishop Hunt?

By Lee Schoenbeck

My neighbor claims to have started his own church: SOW, which stands for Saints of the Outdoor World. His collection plates aren’t real great, but attendance spikes on Sundays in the fall — about the time of the duck and pheasant openers. In our neighborhood, we understand that hunting is a religious experience.

For Catholics in eastern South Dakota, hunting is embedded in our faith. Seriously. There is a stained glass window in St. Joseph’s Cathedral that depicts a hunter. The bishops assigned to this diocese have embraced the relationship. It’s not likely that there are many dioceses in America where funds are raised for seminarian education by arming the faithful and sending them out in the field to put wings and lead in the air. But in South Dakota, it makes perfect sense. This past month, the 17th Bishop’s Annual Charity Hunt was held at the Horseshoe K Ranch near Gann Valley.

HISTORY and LOCATION

The hunt was started in 1996 by Miller businessmen Jim Hart and Dr. Wayne Carr. In the early years there were a few dozen hunters at Carr Farms, under the spiritual — if not hunting — direction of then Bishop Robert Carlson. Bishop Carlson took up pheasant hunting later in life, when his papal assignment landed him in South Dakota. He became an avid hunter — at one point threatening (tongue in cheek) to put his Bishop’s Hunt head-to-head against Bill Janklow’s Governor’s Hunt for want of an invitation to that South Dakota ritual.

Over time, as the hunt grew, its location moved to venues that could accommodate larger and larger groups. Korzan’s near Kimball were gracious hosts for several years. Most recently, the Grohs family has extended their hospitality to the event at their Horseshoe K Ranch.

“BE SAFE OUT THERE”

In 2006 Bishop Paul Swain took over the reins of the Sioux Falls diocese, coming from Madison, Wisconsin. Bishop Swain was a former military officer, practicing attorney, and advisor to a governor — but never a hunter. His first experience with pheasant hunting was to host and participate in the hunt that he inherited with the office.

Now for your average non-South Dakotan, the concept of a pheasant hunt is more than a little strange. Think about it. You tell them that they can be a”blocker” or a”walker.” The walkers will carry their shotguns and start at one end of the field — walking towards the blockers. When a pheasant gets up, which it will between the blockers and the walkers, they are told to shoot it. To the uninitiated, at first blush it seems that they are being told — unbelievably — to shoot at each other. After appropriate inquiry, their worst fears are confirmed — they will be shooting at and be shot at by the rest of the group! But they are instructed to find solace in the part of the safety lecture where the hunters are all told to be careful to not shoot anybody as they put 240 pellets into the air with each pull of the trigger on their 12 gauge.

The Bishop’s Hunt starts with a Mass each morning of the two-day hunt. No hunter ever prayed as fervently as Bishop Swain that first morning of his first Bishop’s Hunt. For those fans of the old TV show Hill Street Blues, Sergeant Phil’s admonition to his officers at the end of the morning briefing to”be safe out there” had nothing on the passionate”God Bless You” that came from the lips of Bishop Swain that day — at what surely must have seemed like a pre-emptive dispensing of the Last Rites.

PURPOSE — THE SERIOUS SIDE

Through the sponsorship of organizations like Avera, Tessier’s and Muth Electric, the hunter’s registration fees and proceeds of the banquet auction, the Bishop’s Hunt generates funds. Initially the funds went to the support of the Catholic elementary school in Huron, and later the general mission of the Catholic Foundation. More recently, the funds have had a more focused purpose.

Bishop Swain came from a military background and South Dakota had many families affected by military deployment when Bishop Swain arrived here. Understanding the helplessness of a family crisis for a soldier deployed a half a globe away, he created the St. Raphael’s Fund to meet any needs of soldiers or their families — without red tape or reservations. If a soldier found out that his wife was in turmoil because a fridge had died in the home back in South Dakota, with no way to pay for it, then without regard to denomination, the fund paid for it. From the tragic to the mundane, St Raphael’s Fund is there to step in and help the families of soldiers. The hunt was so successful, within a few years the fund accumulated more money than it could spend — and the hunt took up a new mission.

Educating seminarians is a blessing — but an expensive one. For the last two years, the hunt’s goal has been to raise enough funds each year to pay for the education of one seminarian for one year.

TIES THAT BIND

Every hunt we partake in generates memories and relationships that survive and transcend that one day in the field. What hunters understand is that the hunt isn’t about killing. It is about camaraderie, it’s about an experience. Lives in houses and hallways and highways don’t create that personal bonding experience that Mother Nature presents as an opportunity out in the fields enjoying all the smells and tests and contours she has to offer. The hunt is about working with dogs and people, and facing the surprises the good Lord has created for us out there on the land. You get to know people on a hunt.

Tom Walsh would be a character in any crowd, but armed and given a field for a stage he rises to the part. Bishop Swain has recorded one pheasant kill. This writer was there to see it. The bird rose in front of the walkers, the bishop’s gun went off, the bird fell — and Tom Walsh yelled,”Nice shot, Bishop!” To this day the Bishop wonders about the smile on Tom’s face and the twinkle in his eye (and maybe the smoke from his barrel), but the seal of the confessional is absolute … so,”nice shot, Bishop.”

Major Martin Yost was leading forces in the Middle East when Bishop Swain started the St. Raphael’s Fund. On two separate tours his service there coincided with the Bishop’s Hunt, and Captain Yost got up at 2 a.m. to appear by Skype at the hunt banquet, providing the gathered with insights into the lives of our South Dakota soldiers serving in those desert stations. Last year Major Yost, now home in South Dakota and serving full time with the Army Guard, was a guest of Bishop Swain at the hunt. This year Major Yost was last seen late at night by the bonfire, plotting with a dozen other new hunter friends on how an Occupy Blue Cloud movement had real possibilities to succeed with the right strategic deployments.

Dick Muth is one of those unassuming, polite guys that isn’t prone to talking about his accomplishments in life, which are many. Dick has been a team leader and catalyst of the hunt for many years. But in those times you get to spend with new friends around the banquet table you learn things. There was a hunter that had just returned from serving in Iraq, and Dick walked up to thank him for his service. As you listened, you heard this hunt leader relate how he understood the challenges because — right out of a small town in South Dakota — he had found himself in the jungles of Vietnam, relying on his rifle for survival. You’d never imagine that surviving that experience unquestionably shaped the work ethic and drive of a young boy that returned home to South Dakota a man. Hunts provide the opportunity to learn about the people that are about us.

A LASTING REWARD — TAKE TO THE FIELDS

So this fall, take part in the hunt. Spend time afield with friends and family. Learn something about them, your state and yourself. If you get lucky, be a part of making your hunting experience a lasting reward for some bigger purpose. Take a young person out and mentor them. Take a disabled vet out and make a down payment on repaying them. Go to a charity hunt, as you will unquestionably be blessed with more than you give. While — if you’re a hunter — you can hunt any time and save the coin, you don’t always get the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others you share this earth with. A charity hunt is an opportunity to reap and share the bounty we have been so richly blessed with here in South Dakota.

There is one other charity hunt that my buddies and I take in each year — the Mother of God Monastery Charity Pheasant Hunt at Oak Tree Lodge near Clark. We refer to it as the”Nun Hunt,” but that’s a story for another dayÖ.

Lee Schoenbeck grew up in Webster, practices law in Watertown, and is a freelance writer for the South Dakota Magazine website.

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All Good Things Must End

By Bernie Hunhoff

South Dakota’s rural solitude is church-like to many of us. I don’t know how many farmers and ranchers have told me through the years that they’ve felt closer to God on the land than in a pew.

When cowboy troubadour Kyle Evans sang “I’m in Heaven on a horse on the wide open prairies of Dakota …” he spoke for everybody who has ever chewed on a blade of blue stem.

But as church-like as the prairie might be, it seemed even holier at Blue Cloud Abbey in Grant County — a picturesque little monastery that grew into a popular retreat center for all sorts of people, including South Dakota’s reflective writer Kathleen Norris.

The true story of how the monks came to locate near Milbank is as sweet as the prairie grass. The priests and monks at St. Meinrad Abbey in Indiana wanted to establish a new monastery in the Dakotas so they sent four brothers to scout the area in 1949. They liked a spot above the Missouri and James Rivers near Yankton, but WNAX’s tall radio towers obstructed the view so they decided to drive to Fargo, North Dakota.

On the way (this was before I-29 was built) they stopped outside the tiny town of Marvin and saw a rolling, wooded string of hills above Grant County’s Whetstone Valley. The land was rocky but they liked it so they went to nearby Milbank to inquire. They were directed to the Milbank banker, who told them that they land had just been listed for sale within the last 30 minutes. He offered them 300 acres at $22 an acre.

Their good timing and the banker’s name were signs they couldn’t ignore, so the Benedictine monks immediately inked the deal. The banker’s name? Effner Benedict.

There were 40 founding members, but their numbers have now dwindled to a dozen and three are over 90. “What else can we do?” asked Abbot Denis Quinkert, as he solemnly spoke of the monastery’s plan to close the doors.

Abbot Denis hopes a religious group will take over the monastery, but no one knows what will happen to the beautiful facility. The only thing we know for certain is that the same spiritual quality that was discovered by the Indiana monks 63 years ago — a spirituality that is very familiar to all who love the land in South Dakota — will be there to await the next tenants.

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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.