Elders anxious to hear their songs

By Ron Burtz

 

“I’ve been telling everybody I never considered myself an elder,” says Mark Thompson, one of the four seniors whose life story will be featured at next week’s Elders’ Wisdom, Children’s Song program in Custer. “I guess they ran out of old folks, so they had to dip into us young guys.” 

At 72, Thompson, who still goes to work every day at Outlaw Ranch church camp, is not alone in being surprised that he was chosen for the honor. Fellow elders Nina Nielsen, John Culberson and Lorie Steinhauer all expressed surprise to one degree or another that they were considered elders. All are looking forward as well to hearing the songs written about them by fourth and fifth grade students at Custer Elementary with the help of four local songwriters. 

They will get that opportunity for the first time Tuesday night at the Custer High School (CHS) Theater when the children will talk about the elders and perform their songs live. The program begins at 6:30 p.m. and is open to the public free of charge. 

“It was great,” said Thompson of his experience of being interviewed by Jenn Doyle’s fifth grade class for the project. “I didn’t know what to expect.” 

Thompson says some of the questions asked by the students were simple, such as “What was your first car?” However, he says other questions were more thought-provoking, as in “What goals would you like to accomplish yet in your life?”

Thompson says he is anxious to see if the theme he tried to emphasize to the students is borne out in their song. 

“What I wanted to get across was the idea that we all have different gifts and that all of these gifts are necessary,” said Thompson, “and we need all of them. It works best when we share our gifts. I tried to dwell on that a little bit.”

Born in Sioux Falls, Thompson grew up and graduated from school in Langford. Following his graduation from Augustana College in Sioux Falls he taught school for five years in Salem. Then, in 1973 he and his wife, Bonnie, came to Custer to work at Outlaw Ranch for the summer and “fell in love with the Black Hills.” He worked one more year at Salem then moved to Custer in the spring of 1974 and has lived here ever since. 

After working in construction, building and remodeling homes for a number of years and working construction at Crazy Horse Memorial a couple of years, one day in 1986 Thompson got a call from Outlaw Ranch. 

The old lodge he had helped remodel when he spent those first two summers in Custer had burned down and the camp asked if he would consider coming back and working with volunteers to build a new one. He said “yes.” 

“One thing led to another, and we got the lodge built and they asked if I would stay on as the facility manager,” said Thompson. He is still working there today and laughs, “It’s gotten to be almost a career now.”  

Thompson works with a group of volunteers who come out nearly every day and jokes that his team has been dubbed “Mark’s Adult Daycare.” 

Mark and Bonnie have been married 49 years and have three grown sons, five grandsons and one granddaughter. 

Marianne Fridell is the songwriter who worked with the students to craft the song in Mark’s honor. 

For Steinhauer, the experience of working with the students was nostalgic for at least a couple of reasons: first, because she was a teacher in the Custer School District for 33 years and, secondly, because the questions asked by the students took her back to an incident that occurred when she was almost too young to remember.

Steinhauer was born and raised in Eagle Butte and taught for three years in Dupree, but she says she “wanted to go where there were trees and hills and water.” She came to Custer to teach second grade in 1978 and says she found it all right here. 

Since coming to Custer, Steinhauer met her husband, Roger, (they were married in 1980) and gave birth to three children, all of whom are graduates of CHS. The Steinhauers have three grandchildren as well. 

After her retirement from teaching in 2011, Steinhauer kept busy working as a substitute teacher and tutored a student who had dyslexia. She says the tutoring was so successful the school district eventually adopted the teaching program she used. More recently she has enjoyed babysitting her grandchildren who live in Spearfish. 

Steinhauer says working with songwriter Hank Fridell and the class of fourth graders taught by Cheri Hartman and Kara Bradeen was a fun experience that reminded her of being back in the classroom, a routine she fell back into rather quickly.

She says she was also challenged to remember details of her early life in Eagle Butte. She told the students how her father’s hardware business and their home, which was in the same building, burned down and they lost everything including the family dog.    

“I was only 3,” says Steinhauer, “but I do remember going to get shoes with my grandma and how big the step was, stepping up into the shoe store. The dog was outside and he would have been safe but he wanted to be in with the family and later we found him at the back door. He died.” 

Steinhauer says the students wanted to know all about the dog including his name and other details. 

“So I called my mom who is 94—she’s in assisted living—and it was like yesterday the way she retold me,” said Steinhauer, adding that her mother recalled the dog’s breed, name and other details. 

Steinhauer said she is looking forward to hearing the song Tuesday night, adding “It will be fun to hear what they come up with.”

The fourth graders in Cole Chasen’s class who worked with songwriter Keith Burden to write Culberson’s song would have had many themes from which to choose. Culberson, who moved to Custer at the age of 7, has had a long and interesting career in several fields and has a fascinating story to tell about the power of a dedicated teacher in a child’s life. 

Born in Shelbyville, Ill., Culberson and his mother moved to Custer after his parents’ divorce.  

“Her brother and mother had bought the Tradewinds, now known as the Dakota Cowboy,” said Culberson. 

Graduating from CHS in 1965 Culberson went on to get his undergrad and a master’s degree from South Dakota State University in 1971. 

However, he says all the while he was in school he was spending his summers in Custer, working first as a cook at the Tradewinds then running the city pool for one summer. But he says the most fun was the summer of 1971 when he was the “summer cop” in Custer. 

“Best summer job I ever had,” says Culbertson of his time as the Custer cop. “I just had a ball...although I could have readily died.”

Culberson says after only three days of training which consisted mostly of riding around with an officer, “I was out on the street by myself from 10 at night until 6 in the morning. If I were to get any help I would have to get somebody out of bed.”

After graduation, Culberson worked as a teacher in Lyman County and was an assistant junior high principal in Pierre. He went on to become the deputy secretary of the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs and then worked for a law firm for 10 years, becoming one of the state’s first private investigators. Culberson later served as chief tribal judge for the Crow Creek Sioux Tribe and had another career as an investment banker. 

In 2002 at the age of 52, Culberson and his wife, Susan, retired and moved to Custer where they built a house. 

But retirement just wasn’t in the cards yet. The same year Culberson was tapped to run the county highway department although he had no experience in the field.

“I couldn’t even start a motor grader let alone run one,” admits Culberson, but he agreed to take over the job temporarily and worked there another eight years.  

When he moved to Custer, Culberson, who had been fire chief in Pierre, went to work for the Custer Ambulance Service, a job he still enjoys nearly 20 years later. 

The Culbersons have been married 32 years and have four children, two of whom are from John’s previous marriage. They also have six grandchildren. 

An aspect of Culberson’s life that may appear in his song has to do with the fact that when he first moved to the Black Hills and entered Custer Elementary as a second grader he couldn’t read. 

His teacher, Marian Harris, recognized his plight and set about to help him. 

“She went the extra mile and would not allow me to go out for recess,” said Culberson. “I stayed in until I could read. She spent a great, great deal of time with me.”

Culberson says he encountered Harris at a basketball game in Custer years later when he was in grad school.

“She said, ‘Johnny, I understand that you’re getting a master’s degree this spring.’ I said ‘I will tell you right now if it were not for you I would be digging ditches somewhere’ and she started crying. I told the kids about that and I hope that made a positive impact.”

The fourth elder whose story will be told in song is Custer city councilwoman Nina Nielsen whose granddaughter Holly Nielsen happens to be in the class she worked with. 

Born and raised on a farm near South Shore which is 18 miles north of Watertown, Nielsen has lived in Custer since 1983. 

When asked what brought her here she responds with the one word answer that could have been given by many of Custer’s earliest residents—“gold.”

Nielsen explains that her husband, Wayne, was involved in mining gold, feldspar and other minerals for a number of years. Nielsen says she worked various jobs when she first came to town but then began working for the U.S. Forest Service. After 19 years of working the front desk, as an office automation assistant and various other responsibilities she retired in 2011. 

For the past five years she has served on the Custer city council. 

Nielsen has five children, four of whom are CHS graduates. Between her and her husband they count a dozen grandchildren as their own. 

Speaking of her experience of working with Rapid City songwriter Leonard Running and Isaac Parsons’ fifth grade class, Nielsen says, “It was delightful and it brought back things I forgot. It was neat because they made me think and remember about my childhood and growing up.”

Nielsen says the children asked many questions such as, “What did you like about your school?” 

“I went to a one-room country school,” Nielsen told the children. “We had, I think, 13 kids in eight grades.”

One interesting aspect of her early life Nielsen was surprised the children didn’t ask more about was the fact that both her parents were deaf and could not speak. She said the children seemed to accept that fact without much question but did ask how she was disciplined.  

“Of course they couldn’t holler at us,” said Nielsen, who went on to describe how her mother taught her words in sign language (which is actually her first language) by pointing to pictures in the Sears catalog and making the sign for the object. 

“It was a fun bunch to work with, and they all had a lot of questions,” said Nielsen. “I was delighted to be asked. I’m looking forward to hearing the song.”