Bringing Sunshine Into the Lives of Others

When winter hits and Donna Schipke, 84, checks up on her rural neighbors in western South Dakota, her gesture is more than a friendly greeting. The contact can be a life and death matter.

And when Schipke drives seven miles down gravel roads to volunteer in Newell (pop. 675), her efforts may well determine whether the town survives as a viable community.

“I grew up thinking you look out for your friends and neighbors,” says Schipke, who lives by herself in a rambling farmhouse seven miles outside Newell. “I used to think I had to take food, but now I just go and visit.”

In a town the size of Newell, which bills itself the “Nation’s Sheep Capital,” there’s no guarantee anyone else will step to the plate if people like Schipke decide they’ve earned a rest.

Schipke is one of the community-minded people who hold the town together. She coordinates blood drives, serves as church secretary, prepares food for sheep sales, judges school essay contests, teaches Sunday school, sits on a committee that selects a local student of the month, and helps run the polls every election.

“I’m told some of these jobs are for life,” says Schipke, with a hearty, jovial laugh. “That’s okay, because it’s a matter of getting things done, things somebody has to go and do. I’ve never let my age be an excuse for not doing things.”

“Donna’s involved in everything,” says Melvin Dietz, pastor of the Newell Independent Congregational Church. “Everyone here is her friend. The main thing I appreciate is how she visits shut-ins.”

Some of those shut-ins live at retirement homes in Black Hills towns up to an hour away. Ever loyal to Newell, Schipke makes sure to gas up at a local service station before heading out, so her dollars circulate close to home.

Often Schipke visits people in retirement homes who are younger than she.

“I’ve been blessed with good health,” she says. True, she’s had both hips replaced, one twice. But she bounced back fast, she believes, because of her physical farm life, “climbing up and down off tractors and over lambing pens.”

To nobody’s surprise, Schipke joined fellow Congregational Church members last summer to tear old siding off the church and parsonage. “I didn’t get up on the ladder,” she recalls, “because I knew people would have a fit if I did. But I got what I could reach from the ground.”

People who work behind the scenes, as Schipke often does, seldom win public recognition. However, this past fall, she received the Spirit of Dakota Award, presented annually to one South Dakota woman who exhibits leadership, courage, strength of character, and community commitment. The honor surprised Schipke but, it seems, no one else in Newell.

She and her late husband of 56 years, Byron, moved onto the farm in 1939 and produced sheep and alfalfa. Schipke also taught school for 21 years, 18 of them in the Newell kindergarten. She and Byron raised five daughters, all of whom live nearby. To Schipke’s delight, a Florida grandson recently bought her farmhouse and will one day retire here.

That grandson, Newell people say, may be a harbinger of things to come. Some of the residents who left because of declining agriculture are being replaced by people looking for quiet places to retire or who are willing to commute to distant jobs so their children can enjoy small-town life. Thanks to Schipke, those newcomers are finding a hometown with its spirit intact.

Paul Higbee is a freelance writer in Spearfish, S.D.

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