Feeding South Dakota celebrates 50 years of fighting hunger: A look at their footprint
One of every three children in Buffalo County, South Dakota, is hungry.
In one of the poorest counties in the country — made up mostly of sparsely populated plains, tribal land and the persistent rumbling of the Missouri River snaking through it — there’s a family-owned grocery store off Highway 47 in Fort Thompson, but the cost of milk is $5 and the cost of cereal or eggs is approaching $10, and prices don’t fare much better at the next nearest grocery store 30 minutes south in Chamberlain.
Fifteen percent of households in the area are without a car to seek out better prices anyway.
The poverty rate in Buffalo County creeps ever closer to a haunting 50%, where families endure insufficient housing, bleak employment opportunities or any adequate access to accommodations that make up normal living situations, like dinnertime.
But they are not invisible.
The Tokata Youth Center in Fort Thompson serves around 1,000 meals a month to the people of the Hunkpati Oyate — the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe — providing a free, well-balanced plate of meat, carbs, fruits and veggies mostly provided by Feeding South Dakota, a statewide endeavor to end hunger.
Feeding South Dakota is celebrating a half-century of service this month.
“Having a safe place to eat a hot meal is important,” said Tokata Youth Center director Aaron Vaughn. “If you think past today and tomorrow, next week, next month, next year, you’ve got to have a full belly.”
So, what does the empty belly of one in every three children look like?
A timeline of merciless need
In 1975, when South Dakota was still considered a rural state and the nation was recovering from the most severe recession since World War II, a generous clergy formed a humble community pantry for food insecure families in Sioux Falls.
Their initial effort distributed over 80,000 pounds of food in Minnehaha County alone and grew toward West River by the ’80s, often doubling its distribution numbers year over year and merging with one county after another to keep up with need.
Today, that booming business fulfilling a relentless demand is known as Feeding South Dakota, the state’s largest hunger-relief organization that has now distributed over 14 million pounds of food over the past 50 years and served over 11 million free meals across all 66 counties in the state.
“And right now, we have the highest need we’ve ever had,” said Lori Dykstra, CEO of Feeding South Dakota since 2021.
The staggering numbers in Buffalo County only contribute to an even larger plight: One in nine adults and one in six children experience food insecurity in the state. What does that mean?
Over 10% of South Dakotans are consistently unsure of how they will afford to eat.
“It’s such an important, complicated, often misunderstood issue,” said Feeding South Dakota board member Mike Gould. He often hears the “general ignorance of food insecurity” when people give the advice to “just pull yourself up by the bootstraps.”
“But the face of hunger is a child who doesn’t even have bootstraps,” he said. “We need to teach people what hunger really looks like.”
Dykstra, who previously served as COO for Girl Scouts Dakota Horizons in Sioux Falls, said they are seeing more working families in their food lines than ever before. Similarly, self-deprecating college students flock to campus food pantries without outwardly acknowledging that they prioritize tuition over lunch. Seniors who are homebound, single working mothers who need to keep their homes warm and their cars running or unhoused veterans on the streets: They are cutting food from their budgets because economy hits hard, they are in poor health, they are facing discrimination, or their “bootstraps” are worn enough.
“My goal is to disarm judgment,” Dykstra said.
Programs extend support for families
Collaborations to achieve that goal are what has made Feeding South Dakota so prolific over the years.
Feeding South Dakota might be most well-known for its Backpack Program, an initiative that sends food insecure students home with 5 to 8 pounds of food for the weekend.
In 2024, the nonprofit filled 165,000 backpacks.
“But the struggle is these backpacks don’t meet the needs of that family,” Dykstra said. “It is meant to feed the need of that kid, but they are going home to a hungry family, they are sharing that backpack with their family, and it’s not enough food.”
Fulfilling a need in one place only unveils need in another, so now Feeding South Dakota has opened school pantries across the state, where families can shop for food when they pick up their children. In 2024, over 3,000 pounds of food fed over 600 students monthly.
After the COVID-19 pandemic, Feeding South Dakota became more reactionary, desperately trying to reach thousands of food insecure families now even more isolated. This brought to fruition mobile food distributions, a volunteer effort to set up monthly drive-thrus to hand out boxes without much questioning.
In the program’s first year, over 4.2 million meals were served. Last year, 1,500 people waited in line at the fairgrounds for a Thanksgiving meal in Sioux Falls.
Other programs through Feeding South Dakota include the Senior Box Program, delivering free boxes to nearly 28,000 senior residents last year; and the Wellness Pantry, immediately serving over 18,700 patients in 2024 who were screening positive for food insecurity at their doctor appointments.
Lastly, partnerships like the one with Tokata Youth Center in Fort Thompson help to make room at the dinner table.
Dave Lone Elk on the Pine Ridge Reservation, who runs a food pantry in Porcupine, used to open his doors only monthly. Now that he’s partnering with Feeding South Dakota, he’s open at least eight times a month and serving around 40 families weekly.
“People can come at their own convenience now,” Lone Elk said.
On the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, Mary Olive helped to found The Mustard Seed, a community that offers food from Feeding South Dakota and 8x12 cottages for 40 unhoused or home-bound families. During the summer, 300 people are served weekly picnic-style meals in Eagle Butte, where there are otherwise only two small grocery stores covering two entire counties.
Feeding South Dakota is rain for the food deserts.
“We strengthen bodies, raise spirits, respect people and encourage hope,” said Olive, who along with two other women serves as a volunteer to operate The Mustard Seed. “We don’t want children going without. I want to know people are getting fed.”
How you can be a partner to Feeding South Dakota
For 25 years, a philanthropist known as R.F. Buche has been president of G.F. Buche Co., a fourth-generation organization that owns grocery stores and fast-food restaurants in 23 rural locations across the state, including all nine reservations. Ten years ago, Buche founded Team Buche Cares, a deeper initiative to address hunger and which Dykstra touts.
“Our initial effort in the next five years is to push resources into rural communities, and we need partners like R.F. Buche to do that,” she said.
Buche said last summer, he worked with the Pass Creek Tribal Council to serve 28,000 meals twice a week to children across all nine districts of the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Next week, he will host the inaugural Steelers in the Field fundraiser in Dallas, South Dakota, a charitable pheasant hunt for Team Buche Cares that will welcome NFL players Mason McCormick, Zachary Frazier and Ryan McCollum.
“Hunting has long been a tradition in South Dakota,” Buche said. “Through Steelers in the Field, we’re bringing awareness to food disparity in rural and tribal communities and helping to improve access to nutritious food for those who need it most.”
How else can you help?
Dykstra said as part of its 50th anniversary, Feeding South Dakota has introduced 605 Meal Makers, a monthly giving program asking community members to donate $50 a month for a year.
“That’s 150 meals to families and 1,800 meals in one year,” Dykstra said. “And our food sourcing team is very creative with menu planning.”
Donate peanut butter if you can, Dykstra said, but if you donate $1, that makes three meals.
“People who are fortunate enough to take care of people who are not fortunate enough, that’s an amazing story,” she said. “That’s neighbors helping neighbors achieve more equitable access.”
Dykstra said she is “hopeful,” and board member Gould believes persistence will prevail.
“We are not in good shape, and change is slow,” Gould said. “But we are problem solvers, and everybody is part of the solution here.”
Outdoor music venue CEO leads consistent growth for South Dakota arts scene
Next year, Levitt at the Falls will grow from an intimate band shell on a lawn to a 7,000-square-foot music venue, all from the tap of a wand in Nancy Halverson’s hand.
She has made it all look so effortless.
Halverson is the president and CEO of Levitt at the Falls, a nonprofit organization that provides outdoor live music to communities nationwide. Our Levitt has been in town since 2019, at once an inviting grassy knoll right at the entrance of Phillips to the Falls, where passersby and tourists and neighborhood businesses hear the echoing of music outside and, before they know it, have swayed on the lawn until the last song at sunset.
And it likely wasn’t even a genre they would’ve liked.
That’s the grace of Halverson, an unassuming businesswoman who all year long stumps across the city and region to raise money so she can book bands and residents can enjoy free concerts on warm summer nights.
And many of them are up-and-coming performers — diverse in their age, nationality, style and sound. It’s like surprise and delight at the Levitt, with food and drink and camaraderie.
That’s all Halverson, but she doesn’t even care whether you know that. She just wants you to come on by and hang out in her backyard.
“All I know is that she wants to make a difference,” says Laura Mullen, director of volunteer engagement at the Levitt. “And she does. We could not ask for a better leader than Nancy.”
A return to Sioux Falls for the arts
Halverson and her husband, Bruce, first lived in Sioux Falls from 2000 to 2006, when Bruce was president at Augustana University (Augustana College at the time).
During those few years, Nancy Halverson was the hostess with the mostest.
“As ‘first lady,’ I had thousands of people through my house,” she said.
But she loved it. With a background in musical theater and as a singer in many bands, she welcomed the fellowship that would later serve her future career at the Levitt.
After her husband’s tenure at Augie, the couple and their son moved to South Carolina for a bit, where Nancy Halverson ran a children’s museum before they returned to Sioux Falls to be closer to family.
It was then that a dear friend of Halverson’s, former South Dakota politician and local photographer Tom Dempster, tapped her to run the Levitt. The concept to open one here was his idea, Halverson says.
“I remember when we lived here before, I found that area of town as a lost opportunity,” she says of the burgeoning Phillips to the Falls today. Now there’s apartments, restaurants and commercial spaces at Cascade at Falls Park, west of the Levitt, and a hotel, more restaurants and office spaces at The Steel District, just north of the band shell. The River Greenway project and Lloyd Landing continue to develop, and Jacobsen Plaza in the same area is underway.
Lloyd Companies, who owns the nearby Steel District and Lumber Exchange, once credited the Levitt as the reason they were able to even dream up the expansion, Halverson recalls.
“I just love that the arts have been such a big part of this community growth,” she says.
Year-round programming includes camps, mixers, volunteering
At the jump, Levitt at the Falls hosted 30 free summer concerts in its first year. It was a wild success. Then, the pandemic struck, and they had to get creative — Halverson’s signature move.
“Way back in 2019, Nancy had our staff sit down and create value statements that would help guide our decisions,” Mullen said. “With those guideposts, we were able to create and provide new programs that reached far beyond the concerts on the lawn.”
You think their summer is busy? That’s the party after all the work, the cold drink after the long day.
Today, their off-season programming includes professional development for musicians — like helping with taxes or Monday night mixers so musicians can get to know one another — summer camps for kids or volunteering at area nonprofits. They also put on “Levitt in your Neighborhood” concerts — like hosting performances in the parking lot of Good Samaritan Society for the residents or bringing musicians to perform at Sanford Cancer Center or Avera Behavioral Health.
It wasn’t enough for Halverson to invite thousands of guests to her — over 100,000 people showed up last year — so she brings “the healing power of music” to hundreds of them.
This is why the Levitt is growing — both physically around the bandshell and in the community today.
Three large naming gifts round out $5M expansion plan
Last month, Levitt at the Falls announced a breakthrough in its $5 million expansion campaign, confirming three large naming gifts that will support new office and programming spaces, a second stage, larger storage for equipment as well as dressing rooms and a green room for performers.
“The Sweetman Atrium,” the largest part of the expansion, will be named after Dick and Kathy Sweetman, who gifted to the Levitt via the Sioux Falls Area Community Foundation. The “Lust Family Second Stage,” for additional educational programming, will be named on behalf of a gift from John and Jeanelle Lust.
The Dakota State University Foundation also served as a donor and will name future programming space, and any remaining funds will be used to purchase more lighting, sound and video equipment.
Construction will begin Sept. 1.
“The Levitt is an important part of our city,” said Sioux Falls Parks and Recreation director Don Kearney, who partners with Halverson, her board and her mighty staff of five. “We are excited to work with Levitt at the Falls to complete the expansion to the shell, and I look forward to seeing the new programming opportunities.”
How does she do it?
When the Argus Leader first met Halverson in her swanky office in December — located as of now inside the Gourley Building but soon at the bandshell once the expansion is complete — she excitedly pointed to her science-project-style poster board, nearly covered with thumbtacked pictures of bands she had already booked for this coming season, each under their scheduled performance date and with only a few opening slots remaining.
“The goal is a diverse audience, so I want as much diversity on stage as I can possibly get,” she says. “I am looking for artists who represent our community so that any child who comes to the stage can look up and see somebody who looks and sounds like them.
“That,” she emphasizes, “is how we will build community through music,” making a nod to the Levitt mission nationwide.
In all, there will be over 50 concerts this summer, every Thursday through Saturday, beginning May 23. The lineup will be announced this spring.
Halverson says to completely fill her loyal poster board — “I’m a visual person!” — she needs to always be building relationships with agents and navigating busy tour schedules of multiple bands at once. She looks for “great musicianship and clean entertainment.”
The Shaun Johnson Band is always a hit every summer, she says, as is Brulé and their annual Lakota music festival, All My Relatives. Halverson is planning a new festival this year with the ADA, featuring performers of all abilities, and a few other surprise shows.
When she’s not networking, Halverson is writing grants, booking hotels for the performers and food trucks for the lawn, writing annual reports, recruiting volunteers, drawing up brochures and maybe even knitting a sweater or two at home. But the ring of an agent or contributor is ever near.
“My goal is always that we should be the duck on top of the water,” she says. “Nobody should see our feet.”
But we as the music lovers are getting doused with her good graces, and we’re thankful for the duck.
“Though our Levitt board had high aspirations for sure, the Levitt today is 10 times as crazy successful as our wildest dreams,” says Dempster, who served on the board when Levitt shows first hit the stage. “So much of that success is because of Nancy. She herself is a super-star — insightful, passionate and utterly indomitable.
“When I go to the Levitt concerts, I often find myself choking back tears.”
S.D. Mediterranean restaurant named one of best in the country by USA Today
As published in the USA Today on Feb. 12, 2025.
Originally published in the USA Today.
At Sanaa’s Gourmet Mediterranean in Sioux Falls, S.D., clean cuisine is not meant to make you feel full, it’s meant to make you feel well.
Owner Sanaa Abourezk has intrigued the Midwest for years and has received national attention on “Beat Bobby Flay,” in Food Network Magazine and in the New York Times, but according to USA TODAY’s 2025 Restaurants of the Year list, today her restaurant is one of the top 44 places to eat in America.
“This is so nice, I’m so flattered,” said Abourezk, a two-time James Beard Award nominee. “You have to understand, I had never opened a business before, and I’m a woman selling food no one has heard of before, but I opened this place so people can know what fresh food really is.”
More:What's the best restaurant near you? Check out USA TODAY's 2025 Restaurants of the Year.
More:Inside look at how USA TODAY chose its Restaurants of the Year for 2025
What makes Sanaa's stand out
The odds were against her. Abourezk was a Syrian-born agricultural engineer with a master’s degree in nutrition who wanted to serve soy beans and tofu in a state that needs red meat on every menu.
“People would come in and say, ‘So what do you have here that I can eat?’” Abourezk said. “‘Do you have a burger? Do you have a hot dog? Where are the French fries?’”
She’d kindly offer kufta instead, a Turkish meatball in tomato sauce that probably a Midwestern carnivore could appreciate, and they’d come back the next day.
“I just wouldn’t compromise,” Abourezk said. She was told to change her menu, to change her hours, to serve drinks or to go someplace else, but her snug and neighborly lunch spot stays anyway, with its savory spices, chopped veggies every morning, pitas in the oven and music in the kitchen, just as she intended more than 20 years ago.
Abourezk is like a gentle mother to the Sioux Falls community, quietly putting a bowl of chickpea soup in front of us when we didn’t even realize we were hungry for it. On her social media, she teaches us how to make an “easy breezy” sumac-spiced arugula sandwich and how to “cookercize” for our bodies and souls.
“I just want you to enjoy healthy food and teach you how to cook well,” Abourezk said.
And don’t think healthy food cannot be sweet. There’s baklava and lady fingers in the pastry case, but it’s Abourezk herself who is the cherry on top. If you catch her on Instagram or even in the restaurant’s kitchen, her hip is poppin’ to 50 Cent and the bells on her skirt are jingling. Did you just spot an okra necklace on her?
Why, yes you did.
At Sanaa’s Gourmet Mediterranean — the one amid all the steakhouses — there is a pep in everyone’s step and an aroma you want to take in the way you inhale atop a mountain. It makes your body feel good.
What to order at Sanaa’s
Tabbouli: This one’s Abourezk’s favorite dish; she has it for lunch every day. The crisp salad is finely chopped parsley — she goes through 400 bunches of parsley a week — mixed with bulgar wheat, tomatoes, onions, olive oil and lemon juice dressing.
Fatayer: “Say it like flat tire,” Abourezk said. And enjoy it however you like. Choose from eggplant or potato, cheese or mushroom shawarma, beef or chicken (16 options in all) for this Mediterranean calzone. It’s made with homemade pita bread dough, baked in a stone oven — “We don’t fry anything, period!” — and served with a side of basmati rice pilaf and yogurt cucumber sauce.
Shish tawook: And this one’s for the first-timers. Tender shredded chicken is cooked slowly in red sauce with cumin, garlic and sesame seed paste and served with basmati rice. It’s a safe, delicious dish, one that always makes the skeptics go, “I didn’t know healthy food tasted so good!”
Did you know?
Abourezk was married to Jim Abourezk, the first Arab to serve in the United States Senate, and also her reason for becoming a chef. “Oh, Jim was a lousy cook,” Sanaa said. So when they first met, she took his pan of boiled beans off the stovetop and instead made for him healthy, delicious meals for the next 40 years. He died in February of 2023.
“People used to approach him and say, ‘Ah! Are you Senator Abourezk?’ ” Sanaa said. “And he’d say, ‘Well, I used to be. Now, I’m Sanaa’s husband.’ ”
S.D. activist for trans population named one of USA Today’s Women of the Year
As published in the USA Today on March 1, 2025.
As originally published in the USA Today.
In 2017, Susan Williams’ 10-year-old child wrote her an eight-page letter.
“I can’t do this anymore,” the letter read. “I am a boy, and I have always been a boy. I have never been your daughter, and now I need you to help me.”
So, blindly and completely self-taught, his mother did.
Five years ago, Williams founded the Transformation Project, a resource and educational nonprofit organization for the trans population in South Dakota, a state that tends to discount the LGBTQIA2S+ community and in 2023 banned doctors from providing gender-affirming healthcare to transgender youth.
Williams’ efforts to support her son, Wyatt, who today is an 18-year-old college student in Chicago and “thriving,” have awarded her as South Dakota’s honoree for USA Today’s 2025 Women of the Year program.
The Transformation Project includes an advocacy network, which influences policy against legislative discrimination, and Prism, a community center designed to support, mentor, gather and empower a vulnerable population in her community and region.
“Transgender South Dakotans have faced misunderstanding, hostility and outright discrimination simply because of who they are, and they deserve better,” Williams said.
Wyatt always showed signs of gender dysphoria, a condition where a person might feel convicted that their body does not reflect their gender identity. Williams said Wyatt first resisted girl clothes or long hair, then by age 9 started experiencing severe anxiety, depression and angry outbursts.
“We felt very alone,” said Williams, who was shunned by her church community and distant family after she and her husband began supporting Wyatt. “There were no resources or connections to a transgender community in our state.”
She first hosted a weekly support group in her basement for trans youth and their families until more than 50 people would show up and stay for the entirety of the day. She was growing a community of hope right in her home.
Today, portraits of transgender activists Marsha P. Johnson and Harvey Milk hang next to colorful LGBTQ2S+ flags in the Prism center. They host game nights, “hang out hours” for youth and adults, a virtual Discord and name change clinics, or they watch movies and have coffee as friends.
“South Dakota is full of folks who are ready to surround transgender kids with love and support,” Williams said. “I will continue to wrap my arms around them.”
The Argus Leader sat down with Williams for a special question-and-answer session as part of USA Today’s Women of the Year project. The conversation has been edited for conciseness and clarity.
Who do you pave the way for?
My hope is that I pave the way for people to educate themselves and engage in allyship for the LGBTQIA2S+ community. Through my work and through sharing our story, I strive to create a path where understanding, support and advocacy become the norm, not the exception.
What was your lowest moment?
It was a time when several low moments seemed to collide all at once. Professionally, our state government withheld federal funding intended to support the population we serve at the Transformation Project, leaving our organization in a severe financial bind. We made the difficult decision to sue the state, and navigating a lawsuit was incredibly stressful.
During that process, I was diagnosed with skin cancer, and my mom was diagnosed Parkinson’s disease. There were a lot of tears and months where I was anxious and stressed, but even in that season of struggle, there were moments of joy and growth that reminded me to be grateful.
What is your definition of courage?
Courage is about authenticity – having the strength to embrace vulnerability and bravery to show up as your true self, no matter the expectations or judgments of others. Since I started getting to know folks in the gender-diverse community, I have witnessed incredible courage – both in their stories and allyship.
My son has been my greatest teacher in courage. Watching him live his truth inspired me to reflect on my own life and realize I was not allowing myself to be authentic. I’ve learned there is so much freedom in breaking away from who society expects me to be.
Is there a guiding principle or mantra you tell yourself?
Growing up, both my parents and grandparents modeled lives of service and generosity, with volunteerism at the heart of our family values. Those lessons instilled in me a deep sense of responsibility to give back. I strive to make a positive impact.
Who do you look up to?
My grandmother Evelyn was one of my biggest champions. I felt extremely connected to her. She’d gone through a lot of unimaginable things, but her courage, entrepreneurial spirit and desire to care for others will always inspire me.
How do you overcome adversity?
I’ve built a strong foundation through the challenges I’ve faced in life. But I’m a positive person who holds onto hope, which keeps me moving forward. My faith, family and inner circle provide grounding support, and I’ve learned to reach out for help – through therapy, mentorship or seeking guidance from others who’ve been through similar circumstances. Practicing gratitude or self-care is another powerful tool. Finally, knowing I’ve overcome challenges before gives me confidence that I will do it again.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Stop worrying so much about what others think of you. Being a people-pleaser is exhausting, and you’re not living authentically by doing that. Discover who you are and who you strive to be, and focus on developing confidence. Set boundaries, trust your instincts and embrace your unique self – the world needs you, not the perfect version you think you’re expected to be.
S.D. Symphony Orchestra revives Pulitzer-winning opera from the 1950s
In 1873, a pregnant Norwegian woman looks up to introduce herself to the unrelenting vastness that is the South Dakota prairie — and she is terrified.
The golden grass is tall and suffocating, a sod hut for her family is not yet built, there is an unmarked grave atop an Indian burial ground beset by locusts, and the blinding winter blizzards rob any comfort of a horizon.
But with everything her eyes take in, from the east where she came from and the west where she’s going, she speaks to none of it so as not to break the utter bliss the same view gives her husband.
She sees “nowhere to hide”; he sees his kingdom.
This is fictional man and wife, Per Hansa and Beret, who with their children and a few other Norwegian families have immigrated to Dakota Territory, land established in 1861 and today in southeast, South Dakota.
Per and Beret’s multi-faceted story is poetically told in the novel “Giants in the Earth,” written in 1925 by Norwegian-American novelist Ole Edvart Rølvaag and loosely depicted from journal entries penned by his father-in-law, Andrew Berdahl.
Rølvaag married Jenny Berdahl in 1908 and drew inspiration from the jarring, real-life experiences her family faced while coming to mid-America.
There was open sky and momentous sunsets, “but the prairie can also turn deadly,” the late Washington-based author Hal Simonson once recounted about Rølvaag’s book, “a menacing foe with horrible features, a monster seeking to drink the blood of the settlers.”
The book sold nearly 80,000 copies in its first year, became required reading in South Dakota and was later adapted into a Pulitzer-prize winning American opera by mid-20th century composer Douglas Moore, known widely for “The Ballad of Baby Doe” found often in standard repertoire.
His “Giants” opera premiered in March of 1951 at Columbia University in New York City. Tickets were $1.20.
But then Per Hansa and Beret’s story fell silent. Save a one-off performance in 1971 in North Dakota, “Giants in the Earth” was somehow untouched for over 50 years — until South Dakota Symphony Orchestra music director Delta David Gier happened upon the score with the same delight Per Hansa found our prairie.
“Somebody’s got to do this,” said Gier, an enviable and ambitious giant himself who has been leading the century-old South Dakota orchestra for over 20 years. “It all happened right here in South Dakota! This is a historical opportunity, and we are the people to take it.”
A long-lost revival of Moore’s “Giants in the Earth: The Norwegians in the Dakota Territory” — returning exactly 100 years after Rølvaag published the pioneering tale — will premiere April 26-27 at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and be performed by the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra.
Garnering attention from afar
To resurrect this opera seems a crowning zenith for Gier’s powerhouse career in South Dakota.
Even helming a 75-member orchestra in the Midwest with a “microscopic budget,” Gier’s work ethic is revered worldwide. While being inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2020, the SDSO was defined as “benefitting greatly both in enrichment and its reputation” with Gier’s lead.
When he won the Ditson Conductor’s Award in 2022, he was cited as “the model of an engaged conductor.” Later in 2022, long-time New Yorker magazine music critic Alex Ross called the SDSO “bold and savvy” and as one capable of “forging its own identity.”
With what Gier calls his “fabulous musicians” under his baton, he is a risk-taking music maker, always leaning toward the unconventional contemporary works, and many clamor to see what he’ll do next.
After a $2 million donation to the symphony, Gier felt supported to make “Giants” his next big thing, an ambition many other American contemporary conductors would likely not take on, even with that kind of monetary support.
For one, there are no recordings of Moore’s opera, and the music only existed in manuscript form. An appendix and engraving of the lyrics would also need to be completed, and Gier took this upon himself, both for his orchestra and for any future companies he is confident will perform this after he does.
“I am so invigorated by David’s vision,” said SDSO executive director Jennifer Teisinger in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. She’s been working with Gier since 2019. “I trust him, and I’m not intimidated to try something new like this.”
Tom Morris, who led the Boston Symphony for over 35 years and recently published a memoir that mentions the great work Gier is doing with the SDSO, calls it “exceptional leadership.”
“There is really no better example of Gier’s courage than unearthing this opera,” he said, “a wonderful but fairly forgotten American story that resonates with the area.”
The opera industry is a smaller, closely connected community, and people just keep talking about this. For a Pulitzer-winning opera with “such freshness, beauty and distinct character,” according to the Pulitzer jury in 1951, to not have maintained its reign is puzzling, which has only piqued more interest and envy.
Already, the seats are being assigned with what Gier calls “royalty.”
Simon Woods is president and CEO of the New York City-based League of American Orchestras, and he has announced his plans to attend.
“The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra is one of the most creative and community-focused orchestras in the country, and I have long wanted to experience it firsthand,” Woods said. “The ‘Giants in the Earth’ project is especially fascinating as it’s an example of orchestra using the power of music to delve deeply into local history and identity.”
How music serves as education in history
To educate our community on the preservation of South Dakota history has long been an uncanny trait in Gier, and it’s why “Giants” is such a nice fit for his career.
In the early 2000s, he formed the Lakota Music Project, an effort to “demonstrate friendship” between Native Americans and non-Natives in our region through the art of music.
The effort is similar here, to inform the audience on what immigration was like for the Norwegians and Italians, the Danish and the Irish who came here escaping famine and helping to develop the region.
For exposure to “Giants,” the SDSO will be offering a free book club to the public. On Augustana University’s campus in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, guests can visit the cabin in which Rølvaag wrote the book in 1923. Augustana also used to maintain the Rølvaag / Berdahl family house that was built in 1883. It has since been relocated to the Threshing Bee Grounds in Granite, Iowa.
Descendants of the Berdahl family will be in the audience, as well as Rølvaag’s granddaughter, Solveig Zempel, who is a professor of the language department at St. Olaf University in Minnesota.
Zempel also will be coaching the opera singers in Norwegian diction.
“This is such a big responsibility,” said Meredith Lustig, a New Hampshire-raised opera soprano who will play Beret in the performance. She was one among 10 singers who made the cut after Gier auditioned over 100 candidates in New York City and Minneapolis for “Giants.”
“To have this piece that is fresh and new, but old, is a rare gift to take on and bring back to life without the expectations from other interpretations. I’m so privileged to be the harbinger.”
A love story ‘worth celebrating’
Seattle Opera’s resident baritone Michael Hawk will play the gleeful Per Hansa. The unprecedented “Giants” is already standing out in his career that usually spans the many popular canons, like Pagliacci, Hamlet and Camelot, but Hawk is eager.
“I play a lot of bad guys,” he said. “It’s so fun to now be this ball of energy! Even faced with adversity, what Per Hansa brings to life is joy, and that’s a message we all need.”
“Giants” — named after the “men of great stature” in the Book of Genesis — is a perfect love story with a breathtaking scale of performance. Per Hansa adores his “Beret girl,” and she honors her spouse with dignity, despite her melancholy.
He endures the elements with “inexhaustible strength” while his wife endures depression and regret, both of them capitulating in unexpected ways.
“We don’t recognize how lonely that life was, how desolate and how brave it was to make that trip,” Lustig said. “It’s so easy in opera to write off dramatic women as madness. But I want to make Beret relatable to the audience.”
That’s Gier’s hope. He asserts that the symphony is not “entertainment,” it is transcendent art, of which requires focus and a desire to relate and connect. With a “can-do” spirit, he trusts concertgoers worldwide will lean into “Giants” with heart.
“Contemporary music is a living art form that should serve its unique community,” he said. “I am here to build something significant for them.”
How did a half-century come and go without the music of “Giants”? Maybe the opportunity was waiting for someone like Gier.
Or maybe it is our Maestro Gier who has been waiting for an opportunity like this: To be the magician who will make live again the sounds of a merciless South Dakota prairie that only Per and Beret once knew.
“I am really interested in organizations that are willing to be daring artistically,” said music business veteran Morris. “One of those organizations is the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra. They are worth celebrating! And that is why I am coming to hear it.”
Former Argus Leader publisher Larry Fuller dies at age 83
As originally published in the Argus Leader on Jan. 24, 2025.
The universal newsroom is quiet today.
Larry Fuller, a former editor and publisher of the Argus Leader in the ’80s and ’90s, had a gentle voice but a commanding message that resonated through all six newspapers he led across the U.S. over a 50-year journalism career: Honor your community, respect the privilege we have to tell vital stories and make a difference wherever you are and in any way you can.
And so, as a deeply committed champion of local journalism, he did.
Fuller died Thursday in Sioux Falls at the age of 83.
Fuller’s daughter, Beth Jensen of Sioux Falls, said the day before his death, while with him at a doctor’s appointment, he asked the nurses, “So what is going on in town? What’s happening in Sioux Falls?”
Forever curious, she said of her father.
Then, even on the morning of his death, he was finishing up a news release of the city's coming annual St. Patrick’s Day parade. He loved the parade, she said, and was grand marshal in 2017.
Every year, he took it upon himself to write that news release and then personally deliver it to every news outlet in town, “along with shamrock cookies from Hy-Vee.”
“Nobody loved Sioux Falls more than he did,” Jensen said.
A career that spanned half a dozen newspapers across the U.S.
Fuller grew up in Ohio and Michigan and began his inspiring journalism career at the Mason City, Iowa, Globe-Gazette and then the Minneapolis Star in the 1960s.
He then worked as the executive editor of the Messenger-Inquirer in Owensboro, Kentucky, from 1973 to 1977 before moving to Sioux Falls to become executive editor of the Argus Leader and, in 1978, its publisher.
When Fuller first began his leadership here, the Argus Leader was an afternoon newspaper, and one of his primary responsibilities was to transition to a morning newspaper.
“We had a lot of ‘Wake Up with the Argus’ coffee mugs around the house in my childhood,” Jensen said. “He tried so hard to get people to accept that it was going to be a morning newspaper.
“He always talked a lot about those early days,” she said.
In 1984, Fuller left Sioux Falls to work as corporate staff for Argus Leader's parent company, Gannett, before returning home two years later to resume his publisher role until 1993.
By the late ’90s, he and his wife, Suzanne, moved to Hawaii, where he was publisher of the Honolulu Advertiser and president of the Hawaii Newspaper Agency before retiring from journalism.
He and Suzanne returned to Sioux Falls for the last time in 2009, a community that called to him for decades.
Their return was “moving from paradise to paradise,” Fuller said in an interview with the Argus Leader in 2015. His daughter, Beth, was raising a family in Sioux Falls and his son, Mike, was raising his family in Minnesota.
“The warm weather was not worth being away from family,” he said.
Fuller was a community leader 'wherever he was'
A true journalist, Fuller wrote his own obituary years ago.
He prided himself on his “newspaper jammies,” founded his own school newspaper in high school, spearheaded Gannett’s transition to online journalism in the mid-’80s and then the Honolulu Advertiser’s transition from a weekly to a burgeoning multimedia operation in the early ’90s.
He was named Gannett Publisher of the Year in 1989.
“Larry was smart, thoughtful, energetic, personable and one-of-a-kind,” said Jack Marsh of Sioux Falls, a retired media and foundation executive who was hired as executive editor of the Argus Leader in 1992, when Fuller was publisher. “He was an advocate for excellence on the boards of multiple nonprofits, at the organizations he led and in the community he loved.”
Fuller served on the boards of Sioux Empire United Way, Children’s Inn, YMCA, Dow Rummel Village, the St. Patrick’s Day committee, the South Dakota Newspaper Association and was a founder of Forward Sioux Falls, an organization that is still active today and helps to develops new programs and address economic issues.
“That sustained community development initiative is widely credited with spurring the transformation of Sioux Falls into the vibrant, growing city of today, providing an enviable quality of life for its 220,000 residents,” Marsh said.
With a neighborly heart and as someone who believed deeply in the potential of our Queen City, Fuller gave his life to all of us.
“He had such an eye toward improving the community,” Jensen said. “He had a knack for appreciating the culture and the people wherever he was and respecting them and really making a difference.”
A lifelong appreciation for the news
Fuller exemplified an unwavering dedication to journalism, with a keen ear to our stories up until the day he died. Jensen said in her childhood, Fuller would ask everyone to bring news articles to the dinner table so they could talk about the stories.
“He felt it was so important to know what was going on in the news,” she said.
The most important news today is that we lost him, an infectious, powerful behemoth in Sioux Falls and an advocate to simply love where we live.
“South Dakota has lost an enthusiastic champion, respected journalist and a visionary civic leader,” Marsh said.
How daredevil Steve-O is showing a softer side
When Steve-O called me on a Monday morning from his ranch in Tennessee, I did not meet an absurd stuntman who nailed a fire-breathing backflip that made CNN News; who was willingly towed by a racehorse; who burned his skin off on a dry ice slip-n-slide and once swallowed feces while catapulting himself in a bungeed Port-a-Potty.
Don’t look that one up.
I met the charming Stephen Glover that day: a 50-year-old comedian, author, producer, devout recovering addict and an honest man with a scratchy voice and a scratchy laugh that alone made him adorable.
He was soft-spoken and cheery to the extreme that I never would have known his teeth are fake and he’s had at least a dozen broken bones and “a bunch of” screws to fuse his ankle and collarbone back together (of which he’s since removed so he can put them on display).
But he also fasts till 2 p.m., meditates every morning, bikes 13 miles a day, jogs for another 3 and then ends his day with a “completely psycho” sauna and cold plunge regimen that lulls him into a cozy sleep.
This man doesn’t even walk with a limp. He felt like a friend, not a hazard on display.
“I live a double life, man,” Glover said. “I’m making a really big deal out of this battle against Father Time outside of all the highly self-destructive, ridiculous stuff I do professionally as Steve-O.”
He won’t eat sugar or processed foods but would probably choke on feces again if you asked him to.
You can see the superhuman for yourself on Aug. 11 at the Washington Pavilion − if you dare.
The attention matters more than the stunt itself
Maybe you know Steve-O as Johnny Knoxville and Bam Margera’s sidekick within the "Jackass" franchise. There were three seasons on MTV (originally airing in 2000), four feature films that altogether grossed half a billion dollars and many outlandish spin-offs.
He was shocked, jailed, ruthless, concussed, fined, hospitalized, stung, gagged, trapped and nearly eaten.
But we kept gawking in hysteria, and that’s exactly what he wanted.
“For whatever reason, every fiber of my being cries out to be loved and to do whatever I can to entertain people so that maybe they’ll love me,” Glover said. “But if my desire to provide entertainment in hopes I’ll be loved translates to me actually being lovable, then I’ll keep going.”
Keep them engaged, he said to himself even as a child on a skateboard. Watch what I do next, he implied, peril upon peril. He begged for our attention until we were bewitched, like the funny kid who intentionally trips himself down the bleachers in the high school gymnasium.
And now he still has our mouths gaping, but does he know that?
“I have a really over-developed concern for the opinions of others,” Glover said. “You wouldn’t think of Steve-O as ultra-sensitive, but it is definitely my weakness.”
Glover might be self-deprecating and egregious and the butt of all his jokes, but a vulnerable insecurity hides underneath all of that.
He can’t read negative comments on the internet – “that one is a daily struggle” – he speaks candidly about mental health as an omnipresent work in progress, and he’s distraught about his golden birthday.
“It’s a real party foul to be old,” he said. “It’s almost just a straight-up comedy of errors trying to outdo myself now, to raise the bar yet again but now with the limitations of being Steve-O at 50 years old. Candidly, I can’t keep it up.”
Growth on and off the stage
But he’s sober now, since March 10, 2008, and that alone has bought him a few more years. It was never the pratfalls to worry about. The addictions would have defeated him first.
“I categorically was not funnier or more creative when I was on drugs,” he says. “The reality is that everything to do with me became really sad and tragic. I would not have been able to do standup or anything at all if I wasn’t sober.”
Glover has what he calls an addictive personality. He knows no moderation, be it in health or risk. So when he commits to something, he will see it through with fingernails clawing toward the finish line.
He even fought general anesthesia and beat it for well over 2 minutes.
He is strong-willed and persevering, and he will never give up on himself to see an effort through.
“It’s a tall-ass order, but the biggest challenge is finding peace within,” he said. “In 12 Steps (of Recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous), there’s so much emphasis on honesty and accountability, and I’m really grateful that I’ve made that my way of life.”
Glover has been engaged to set producer Lux Wright since 2018 and says much of his growth is attributed to her.
“I have been doing the work to become the man that the love of my life deserves,” he said. “It’s a really big deal to do the right thing when nobody’s watching, and my relationship with my fiancée is always an opportunity to express myself as the guy I want to be. It’s rad.”
Even off camera, he seemingly dazzles.
Steve-OH NO!
Drew Ferreira is the stage manager at the Washington Pavilion, but he’s also a tremendous fan of Steve-O.
“I lit up when I saw the calendar,” he said of the upcoming show. “I grew up with him, and he’s kind of a cult classic now.”
Ferreira said he never really connected to Steve-O’s rebellion as a kid but appreciates his platform now.
“I’ve really enjoyed his journey and the full circle of it," he said.
Steve-O makes it clear that his comedy tour is indeed “an evolution” of his art and is proud of the multimedia experience fans can expect next weekend. There will be never-before-seen stunt footage that “would be completely unacceptable for YouTube or even Jackass,” as well as slap-stick storytelling to accommodate the illustrations and videos.
“It would be great to just be like, ‘Hey, let me get up there and tell you some funny stories,’ ” Glover said. “But I feel like I need to make every sacrifice I can realistically make to provide the most unforgettable experience for you.”
Steve-O first came to Sioux Falls in 2022, bringing his “Bucket List” tour to a sold-out show at The District.
“He was his true self,” venue manager Shawn Larson said, adding an audience member got sick while watching a stunt and had to leave the room. “You can only imagine what we saw.”
Officials with the Pavilion aren’t worried though. Gina Ruhberg, the director of performances, said the venue is used to a crass show. They’ve brought in stand-up comedy tours with Ron White, Matt Rife and Tracy Morgan, and are looking forward to Steve-O’s own reckless raunch.
“I mean, he needs to not set the place on fire, but we book whatever is selling well on tour and whomever wants to come to our place,” she said. “We can’t wait.”
No matter what you might expect, you’ll be surprised.
“I’m committed to putting this show together and pushing myself harder than ever before,” Glover said.
Steve-O has more than 25 million followers on social media, 7 million subscribers on YouTube and “tens of millions” of stem cells injected into his spine to treat his degenerative disc disease.
But perhaps, most of all, he’s kind of just like us.
The Nora Store Christmas tradition gets national attention
As published in the USA Today on Dec. 24, 2024.
As originally published in the USA Today.
On the nearly invisible corner of 307th Street and 475th Avenue in the middle of Union County, South Dakota, where farmland hugs you from everywhere and the topography begins to roll, I found Father Christmas.
Yes, he had the bellowing laugh and the twinkling eyes and the type of generosity in which you waited for him to pull a candy cane out of his pocket.
But this was not our Santa Claus. Even more than the jolly old elf, he is the humble and charming Mike Pedersen of Nora, South Dakota: a gentleman who plays a restored pipe organ in the middle of nowhere and invites all to come on in, enjoy a Styrofoam cup of warm apple cider and sing carols with him every Christmas.
“I just want people to leave feeling blessed and refreshed,” Pedersen said. “I never dreamed it could have turned into something like this.”
Come Monday morning, Pedersen will be the featured segment of “Beg-Knows America,” a CBS News series that highlights inspiring stories of everyday heroes and is hosted by CBS news correspondent David Begnaud.
“They say people from maybe even all around the world could hear about Nora,” Pedersen said. “Can you believe it?”
From world-renowned Begnaud himself, it’s a resounding yes.
“This is a perfect story at Christmastime,” Begnaud said. “I think the story of a defunct general store coming alive once a year thanks to one man and a restored organ is the slice-of-life, heart-of-America tale I want to tell.”
You can watch him do so at 8 a.m. Monday on CBS.
How a house painter came to Christmas carols
Nora is an unincorporated town in southeast South Dakota with a population of two: Pedersen and his neighbor, Luke Lyle.
But it’s at least an established community.
There first was the Ronning General Store in the late 1800s, next to a creamery where farmers brought in their milk every Tuesday and Friday and became well known for its Sunshine butter brand, Pedersen said.
After that closed in 1906, the Nora Store opened on the same corner promptly in 1907, notably selling vinegar for farming and flour sacks for handmade clothing.
After the Nora general store closed in 1962, it wouldn’t be until a decade later Pedersen settled in.
By then, many mice and cats had beat him to it, nesting into the corners of the Nora Store and in the dilapidated kitchen in the back. But for the next 13 years, Pedersen tidied it and warmed it, and this would become his home.
“My goal was actually to be a farmer,” said Pedersen, who during the rest of the year paints nearby houses, barns and chicken coops. “I got to pay for all this somehow.”
But after his grandparents died, who raised a family farm in the Beresford area, he felt no need to return. Instead, he spent time in California and then Arizona, before a centennial celebration at his mother’s old church, Roseni Lutheran in Beresford, called him back to the Nora area for good.
How a hobby became so much more
Even still, hosting sing-a-longs every holiday was never his intent.
It was happenstance.
In 1986, he bought a few acres to move out of the Nora Store and into the home next door (Someone had to keep up those population numbers).
Shortly thereafter, he began collecting parts of an old pipe organ stored at the University of South Dakota’s National Music Museum in Vermillion.
“Oh, music has always been just a hobby,” said Pedersen, who once took piano lessons “from an old neighbor lady” while living in Los Angeles and otherwise plays music and sings for Roseni Lutheran “just up the hill.”
But, by the fall of 1989, he and a few buddies started piecing the ol’ organ back together enough that “the Lord’s plan” made itself clear.
This hobby would become a life.
“I was awestruck to sit in front of such a thing,” he told the crowd of the organ this week, during a sing-a-long on a blustery Tuesday morning. “I thought, ‘Oh, what a blessing!’ I didn’t deserve it, but I had to hear what it sounded like, so this is what I heard.”
Then he turned his back from the crowd and into the black-and-white haven of his keys, and he played the first song he would ever play on it:
Jesus loves me, this I knowFor the Bible tells me soLittle ones to him belongThey are weak, but he is strong
There were about 20 guests that morning, singing along already and calling out their favorite classics to play next. They arrived in a caravan at about 10 a.m. for a private sing-a-long, from the Trinity Lutheran Church in Tea.
“You can tell we’re Lutheran because no one is sitting in the front row,” said Dick Gors, president of their 55-and-older church group that gathers monthly and attends the Nora Store Christmas as their December activity each year.
“We’ve been coming here for five years now,” said Linda Dannen, of Tea, as she and her husband, Leo, sat in the back row and shared a hymnal. “Mike is a joy, and he makes it a good day.”
Together, they all tapped their feet while Pedersen commanded his organ like a switchboard and they sang, “Away in a Manger,” “Silent Night” and “Oh Come, All Ye Faithful.” Another couple in the back embraced each other as they all sang, “O Holy Night.”
Pedersen took off his shoes around song three to better feel the music and encouraged everyone to ring the jingle bells he placed in each row.
He said guests will sing solos, offer to play their own instruments and even bring cookies for the crowd. Like any place of worship, visitors found an infectious feeling of hope in the room.
“I can remember my husband, Ric, and I coming down here a time or two, and there were people standing outside on the porch and even in the back of the building, so we just stood outside and listened for a while,” said Julie Morren, a fellow pianist from Beresford who has come to accompany Pedersen for many years. “People just hang from the rafters here.”
'Is this my last hurrah?'
Overwhelmingly enough that 73-year-old Pedersen has considered his finale, after 35 years.
“I was having a bad hip and a bad attitude,” Pedersen said, thinking maybe he’d forego the weekend open houses and just host a few private groups instead, like the folks from Trinity Lutheran and the students from Missouri Valley Christian Academy, who were on the schedule the next day.
But then press started rolling in.
A USD student ran an article in The Volante, South Dakota Magazine featured a story last month on Nora Store Christmas without him even knowing, and Begnaud from CBS News called him out of the blue.
Pedersen at least needed to give us one more year, and now Nora might need more parking.
“My hope is that when you see our stories, you see the best among us,” Begnaud said.
He’s been to South Dakota before, covering the pandemic in 2020 and then featuring a Sioux Falls artist earlier this year.
“I hope you see the ordinary doing the extraordinary,” Begnaud said. “It is ordinary to restore an organ. It is ordinary to want to bring people together. But it is extraordinary to attract people from Nebraska and Minnesota and Iowa and across South Dakota, and to do it for more than 30 years. That is extraordinary.”
Pedersen walked gingerly with a cane, and took a break from the organ while Morren continued to play her piano in the corner. He wondered aloud if it’s soon time to, “play music in heaven?”
“Nora has been my life ministry, but is this my last hurrah?” he said after the show. “Me and fame? I don’t need any of that. I’m just trying to be a servant and bless you this Christmas.”
Magic for your Christmas
There is a magic in little Nora, in that century-old country store on the corner transformed into a nostalgic wonderland. But it’s not the trinkets on the wall, a guestbook the size of an encyclopedia, the baby Christmas tree twinkling in the corner or the faux Poinsettia adorning his organ that charms.
It’s Mike, indeed.
“Oh, there’s no place like Nora for the holidays,” Pedersen improvised as he sang, “for the holidays you can’t beat home sweet home!”
Visitors stood and finished together with “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” before Pedersen gave hugs and kindly bid everyone farewell and a happy holiday.
To put a bow on the magic of the hour, Pedersen escorted us to the door and hanged his arm out to wave, the way Father Christmas departs in his sleigh, and do you know what?
It started to snow.