04 Broadcaster Press September 16, 2014 www.broadcasteronline.com CELEBRATING DAKOTA DAYS: PART I The early days of USD’s march toward a millennium By Alan Dale The Plain Talk The funny thing about the celebration of an anniversary is that it actually recognizes what’s been done without acknowledging what’s to come. For the University of South Dakota, starting on Oct. 6, the school will begin a week of pomp and circumstance to reflect on 100 years of Dakota Days. What some may not know is that since the first USD Homecoming celebration of 1914, a solid 100 Dakota Days have been held, as the newest one will usher in the beginning of the future with No. 101. To stand the test of time and do so through wars, depression, and constant societal change, the University of South Dakota has gone from a local university to a regional one, to now a worldly entity. What once was known and available to South Dakotans and others in the immediate area, USD is a university available to one and all and home to Neuharth and Brokaw, to Janklow and Jensen, to Doyle and Starr. For the next four weeks The Plain Talk will present a comprehensive retrospective on just some of the days and memories that dot the landscape of USD lore. It would take volumes to discuss the highs and lows of the last 100 years, but we’ll give it the old ‘college try.’ “It is a homecoming and I look forward to it every year,” USD president James Abbott said. “Some people I have known all my life I see once a year…and I see them at homecoming. “It’s 33 percent nostalgia, 33 percent looking forward, and 33 percent what’s going on today. That’s not a bad combination.” A DAKOTA DAYS PREQUEL: The lead up to TOP: The early days of the University of South Dakota campus. BOTTOM: The first year of Dakota Days, 1914. (Courtesy of USD Alumni Association) celebration From 1862-1899 the University of Dakota (initial name of the institution) began to settle its roots amongst a long stretch of land that only three years earlier had been opened to white settlement. Clay County housed people in dugouts to make it through those first winters and soon one-room log houses became the norm. Skirmishes between settlers and natives were not uncommon in the Dakota territories. Yet a school would slowly build from the soil up. “What I enjoyed most about looking back is seeing the old pictures of students walking up the hill from the old railway station which is down below the hill,” Abbott said. “They disembarked from (different areas) and some were leaving home for the first time from places like north of Aberdeen. They did it to see if they could better themselves and be what they wanted to be.” Three buildings stood on a prairie…that was what constituted the campus in those early days. For some today it would look small in comparison to the current structures, but back then? For many it could easily have been their modern day metropolis. “If you came from an old one-room school house and you came to Vermillion and saw Old Main, East Hall and Science Hall – those were the first three I think – that was probably pretty impressive,” Abbott said. “That was probably a lot more than they were used to.” Eventually more students arrived from all points of the area and a history was born in the university’s resilience and growth. THE FIRST 25: 19141938, Depressions, Great Wars, and Celebrations aplenty “South Dakota Day is a day unique in the history of the University,” proclaimed the Nov. 24, 1914 edition of The Volante – the USD school newspaper four days after the first Dakota Day celebration occurred. It was Robert Slagle, the ninth president at USD, that was a major force behind this landmark moment. “It was first initiated by President Slagle,” Kersten Johnson, Executive Director of the USD Alumni Association, said. “He also worked as president at South Dakota State in Brookings and was instrumental in starting South Dakota Hobo Days which is their homecoming. Then he came down here to be president and started Dakota Days here as well.” With Slagle’s influence, H.C. Mundt, Student Association president at the school took part of the Hobo Day idea and ran with it to set loose the first Dakota Days on Nov. 20. “For students and alumni this is a chance to showcase the pride they have in USD,” Johnson said just two months short of a century later. “What happens in a relatively short period of time – four years of college – sticks with you. People from across the country come back to relive those days and celebrate the institution.” Johnson has done plenty of homework on the early days of the USD homecomings and “What I have learned is that as much as things change there is a baseline that remains constant,” she said. “Kids come to USD eager, anxious, unsure of what they want to do. In their time here, many of them find out that people believe in Excavator Services Available Farm site demolition • Tree Removal Foundation Removal And more! JT Excavating LLC Call 712-635-5099 RETIREMENT MACHINERY AUCTION ? Smile. JD 8760 Tractor, CIH 8920 Tractor, JD 9660 STS Combine Thursday, September 25, 2014 10:30 AM • Lunch Tractors: 1991 JD 8760 tractor, 6410 hrs, rebuilt motor and transmission, 3 hyd, power quad, 20.8-R38’s, nice; 1998 CIH 8920 MFD tractor, 5347 hrs, 18sp. power shift, shuttle shift (factory rare option), 18.4-42 duals, one owner. 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Well maintained line of equipment, visit www. westraatkins.com for pictures. “It’s about the same with signs and pennants and the fun too,” she said. “They have a lot of good stories about the fun and the pranks from the 1920s and are not much different today.” Despite many of the similarities the students of the early Dakota Days were also dealing with the start of World War I and ultimately America’s entry into it (1917), the Great Depression (1929-1933) and the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party (1930s). “War has been a constant in USD history,” Johnson said. “World I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and we have had very accomplished veterans at USD as well. “Students are more serious and intentional and they still have fun. The world is smaller and they get exposed to more things than they used to.” A long-standing university, older than the state itself, has undergone changes that show the climactic shift of over 150 years. “Realizing that they were a university before they were a state was pretty neat,” Julie Ellingson, Communications and Marketing for the USD Alumni Association, said. “Also then they had a larger male population than a female population, but now…the females have more students than males.” Those populations of male and female students at the university would be tested again as the second quarter century was set to begin. Another war was brewing and USD was going to be affected like everyone else. But in Coyote country that didn’t mean they would let it affect Dakota Days or its participants. Not one bit. them – faculty and staff – and walk away believing they can do more than they ever dreamt. “We looked at interviews with alums from the 1940s and the 1980s and that’s a theme that has remained constant.” That first Dakota Days saw parade participants mill about in front of East Hall. “Without a doubt a more cosmopolitan gathering never assembled in this section of the country,” the Volante reported. “There were people of all nationalities, races, and description, representing multifarious forms of occupation.” The first Miss Dakota, Fern Wassum, led the parade that wound through Vermillion en route to meet the Yankton College football team at the train station. USD would win that game 33-3. As time passed the parades would usually get bigger, more accompanying events or moments of splendor were added. When World War I hit, many buildings on campus became barracks and many students enlisted. “Most of them enlisted in the army, navy, or air service, but many returned to the farms in response to the appeal for food. The young women entered nurses’ training schools or prepared comfort kits, surgical dressings and Red Cross work,” Slagle said in a 1920 account to the Coyote. The drought in the summer of 1930 coincided with the Great Depression, but even so, the first student union opened thanks not to tax dollars, but by the USD’s students, alumni, and friends pledging nearly $56,000. “The Union Building is a reality and student life will all be richer because of it – a meeting place for the whole campus, the center of all University Activities,” from the Volante in 1930. As the nation worked itself out of the doldrums of Depression the Dakota Days maintained its significance on the USD campus. 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