Alumni, students reflect on the Dakota Days centennial, its evolution

To “Live the Tradition” at the University of South Dakota,  seniors Kate Turner and Taylor Vavra had seven months to find out what 100 years of Dakota Days represented.

This led the two, who are overall chairs of the Dakota Days Committee, to meet with alumni whose stories date back to when female students had week-day curfews and the British Invasion surged onto campuses nationwide with the release of the Beatles’s first U.S. single, “Please Please Me.” 

“I had my first Dakota Days nightmare a week after we were picked for overall chairs,” Vavra said. “How do we bring back 100 years in a week? It wasn’t an easy question.”

After looking through faded posters and pictures from past D-Days, the two seniors said they knew as early as February that honoring traditions needed to be a focus of the 100-year anniversary. Their guide to pull this off: binders that contain the tips, checklists and general guidance from chairs of years past.

Months of D-Days planning and running events by the student executive board comes to an end the third quarter of USD’s football game against Northern Iowa Saturday. But Turner and Vavra said they hope students do not treat the week-long event as any other homecoming and instead learn about where and why D-Days began.

“A lot of the dignitaries and alumni are coming back, and we want to make sure they know how appreciative we are,” Turner said.

Once referred to as South Dakota Day when it began in the fall of 1914, then-USD President Robert Slagle encouraged the creation of the celebration after he helped initiate the first Hobo Day at South Dakota State University. A Volante article published Nov. 24, 1914 read, “It is the first time that anything of the sort has ever been staged here. By all who witnessed it, it was pronouced a howling success.”

A hundred years later, some USD graduates who planned D-Days while they were students in Vermillion still remember their year’s theme, major activities and the current events influencing the mood on campus.

1962: The folk revival

Folk music. That’s what Jim Beddow, 72, remembers of the year he was D-Days chair in 1962.

“It was the revival. ‘Peter, Paul and Mary,’ they were all really big. It was the very beginning of Rock n’ Roll, which was just starting to capture the country,” he said.

The theme was “America Sings” and included the first outdoor concert held at the university, Beddow said. The folk group The Chad Mitchell Trio performed at the height of their career in the 1960s. They are most known for their satirical songs that criticized current events during the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement.

The 1962 D-Days events also included a bonfire on Thursday and the Miss Dakota Days pageant in Slagle Hall on Friday.

Beddow said the social commentary on campus was rallying around issues of poverty, civil rights and nuclear weapons. As a first-generation college student who left Woonsocket, S.D., and would later run for governor in the state, Beddow said he used his position on the D-Days committee to work with campus administration and extend curfew for women.

Female students at the time had to be back in their dorms by around 10 p.m. on weekdays. Beddow and his committee met with then-USD President I.D. Weeks to negotiate an extension to the curfew.

“We got the curfew pushed back to midnight or 1 a.m. And look at today, we have co-ed residence halls — what a huge shift,” he said.

1976: Crowning the queen

The student body president selected Mary Sue Bissell Szkalak as co-chair of Dakota Days in 1976. The junior from Woonsocket, S.D., was studying mass communications and political science, and said she remembers the whole planning process being surprisingly short.

Co-chairs were selected at the end of the spring semester, and Bissell Szkalak said planning did not begin until the end of August. The committee chose the theme, “Everbody Loves a Circus,” and brought in the alternative group, Ohio, to perform.

The Miss Dakota Days coronation was one of the major events during Bissell Szkalak’s time as co-chair. The coronation chair wrote to former homecoming queens and put together a slideshow that was played during the event.

“Keep in mind this was before computers,” she said. “The chair actually had to hand write every letter sent to past queens.”

1976 also marked the country’s bicentennial, but Bissell Szkalak said she remembered more attention was placed on the upcoming presidential election in November. Jimmy Carter would go on to defeat incumbent Gerald Ford to become the 39th president of the United States.

1980: Disco and mums

For four years, Kim Kletschke wore a mum on her shirt to mark the start of D-Days. The colors would vary between white and yellow, but young women around campus would wear the accessory with a red “U” made from a pipe cleaner in the center of their four-inch flower.

“As long as I’d been in Vermillion, wearing a mum during D-Days was a thing,” she said. “We relied on tradition and that was definitely one of them.”

Kletschke grew up with the evolution of D-Days events and traditions after her family moved to Vermillion in 1970. She was overall chair of the week-long celebration by her senior year at USD in 1980, but was on the D-Days committee all four years she was on campus.

“Yesterday Once Again” was the 1980 theme, and Saturday’s events were the main focus for the committee. Kletschke said the game was held in the DakotaDome, which was a big deal for the student body because the facility was barely a year old.

Kletschke said aside from events hosted at the university, students would also head downtown for disco dancing.

“Some local places had lighted dance floors, so we’d spend the entire evening dancing,” she said.

2005: ‘Heroes’ not fans of cold weather

Jesse Van Heukelom graduated from USD less than 10 years ago, but he said he couldn’t remember much other than Livestrong bracelets and flip phones in 2005.

Van Heukelom transferred to Vermillion from Michigan State University, and would graduate in 2010 from USD’s Sanford School of Medicine. He was the co-chair of the D-Days committee for a superhero-themed week which included Jell-O wrestling and an evening event called “Courtyard Dark Wing Duct Tape Disaster.”

The USD graduate said the only noticeable failure of the week was the outdoor concert by indie-pop group, The Hopefuls, which were known at the time as The Olympic Hopefuls. The weather reached freezing temperatures, causing minimal turnout, Van Heukelom said.

Increasing student attendance was a major focus of the committee, he said. The executive board implemented a student organization point system that would register the percentage of a group that would come to university events. At the end of D-Days, the organizations with the highest attendance percentages had the chance to win monetary prizes.

“We saw that a lot of daily events were poorly attended — which could be because of classes. I don’t think there was an incentive, so we tried to change it up for a year. Who doesn’t want to win prizes?” he said.

2014: Bringing back traditions

Playing on a throwback theme led the current D-Days committee to create a special event marking the 100-year anniversary by taking a re-enacted photo Friday in front of Old Main, Vavra said.

The board is working with the Alumni Association to recreate a photo of former and current students, along with members of the campus community, to mark the occasion in the university’s history. The Alumni Association and USD Foundation are also coordinating other events with the board to avoid conflicting activities throughout the week.

The Friday pep rally is keeping with tradition but will try to incorporate more alumni, Turner said. She said the student board is working to coordinate more mixed-generation events.

Turner said she has been receiving calls since July about the parade. She said the Saturday event will traditionally be a large part of D-Days, and more floats and dignitaries are involved than in recent years.

But, there will be changes to D-Days events, Turner said. The board is looking to encourage more community involvement at the Vermtown Bash, which means changing its location and activities.

The event is typically held in Prentice Park, but Turner said the board is closing down parts of downtown Vermillion to host the Bash. They also plan to coordinate hours that will be used for more family-friendly activities, while later hours will play host to a battle of the bands-style event and a beer garden.

The D-Days committee began their week Oct. 4 at 5 a.m. as they began to chalk the town to begin D-Days. Vavra and Turner said they have jobs filled for almost every event, and they will try to fill in the cracks as the week continues and more people flood into town.

“Probably the most pressure is that Vermillion is going to be packed,” Turner said. “We want to make sure that everything we plan for, we plan for a large quantity of people.”

Photo 1: The musical cast from “Everbody Loves A Circus” performs during Dakota Days week in 1976. Submitted photo

Photo 2: The 1980 Dakota Days Committee poses for a photo before D-Days week begins. Front row: Tami Bowen, Denise Luce, Lori Henderson, Patty Mahan, Cindy Murrell. Middle row: Marya Johnson, Tami Jensen, Lisa Shull, Kim Cleaver, Ann McKeon, Charlie Page and Mary Dennison. Back row: Mike Gellerman, Angle Butler, Kirby Volz, Michael Card and Mark Timmerman. Submitted photo

Photo 3: Jesse Van Heukelom was an overall co-chair of D-Days in 2005. He is a practicing pediatrician in Huron, S.D. Submitted photo