April has been busy! Author visit to schools in Chamberlain and Plankinton, South Dakota, and a SD Humanities Council book discussion with the wonderful women in De Smet, South Dakota. And yes, there was that side trip to Purdue and the additional side trip to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa.
Yesterday, I returned from Faulkton, South Dakota, where I spoke to the Faulk County Historical Society and to the students at Faulkton Elementary School.
One of the gentlemen at the historical society remembered Gutzon Borglum. His father had been in charge of the lumber during the carving, and he (the father) and Gutzon met regularly. This gentleman, as a boy, often accompanied his dad to those meetings. "He was big, and he was rough," he said of Borglum.
The gentleman was 87 years old. When I showed him my drill bit from Mount Rushmore, he told me that he had one that Borglum had given to him. "It was about 3 1/2 feet long," he explained. "Do you still have it?" I asked. "Probably out in one of the sheds," he said, laughing.
The organizer of the event, Jody Moritz, said that her mom went to the 1936 dedication of Thomas Jefferson. This was the dedication at which FDR spoke, but her mom didn't remember the president. She was excited about eating buffalo burgers.
But the star of Faulkton was 102-year-old Irene C. On Monday morning (after I spoke to the schoolkids), she was honored for her contributions as a teacher and for the 1,000 piece framed jigsaw puzzle she was donating to the school.
Very cool. But I was just as interested in her memories. When she was teaching at a rural school in Faulk County during the 1930s, she helped the kids collect pennies for Mount Rushmore.
For more than ten years, I've been researching and writing about Mount Rushmore. But there's nothing -- nothing -- that matches the thrill of talking with people who have firsthand memories of the carving.
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