Jeanne Richardson

Jeanne (Schulte) Richardson

Sioux Falls, SD - Jeanne Ellen (Schulte) Richardson, 85, passed away peacefully on Tuesday, February 2, 2021 at Bethany Home in Brandon, SD.

Funeral Mass will be 10:00 am Saturday, February 6, at Church of St. Mary, 2109 S. 5th Ave., Sioux Falls, SD with interment at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Sioux Falls next to her husband, Lorin.

Open visitation will be from 4:00 - 7:00 pm Friday, February 5, at Miller Funeral Home-Downtown, 507 S. Main Ave. Sioux Falls, SD. Due to Covid-19 the family will not be present to greet friends. They are requesting masks be worn at these events.

Jeanne was born February 26, 1935 in Luverne, MN, to Ferdinand and Anna Brandenburg Schulte. She grew up in Brandon, SD on a farm along the banks of the Split Rock Creek. Her mother died when Jeanne was 16 so she helped her dad in raising her brother and younger sisters. She graduated from Brandon High School in 1953 and was student body president and Homecoming Queen. Following high school, she worked several years at jobs in Sioux Falls to earn money for college, including working for a company in the Queen Bee Mill and at the Manchester Biscuit Company, cracking crackers. These experiences in historic buildings wetted her appetite for local history without her realizing it. During these years she also played lots of fast pitch softball for several teams, through which many lasting friendships were made over postgame beers and the nickname "Schulte" was given.

She enrolled at General Beadle State Teachers College (now Dakota State) in Madison to become a teacher, but more importantly at college she became lifelong friends with her roommate, Donna (Watne) Webster and her family. After two years of college, Jeanne and Donna both received teaching certificates and began teaching together, first in a two-teacher school in Wessington, SD, then in two rural schools near Parker, SD, followed by a stint in Benson, MN. In 1966, with a toddler and infant in toe, Jeanne resumed her studies at General Beadle to finish her bachelor's degree.

On September 2, 1961, Jeanne married Lorin James Richardson in Sioux Falls. She first met Lorin when she was about 12 years old while picking up a delivery of fireworks with her mother and to whom she first expressed her love by writing his name in mud on the abutment of the bridge over the Split Rock Creek by her home. It wasn't until 12 years later that they met again. He proposed to her in the front seat of an Oldsmobile on 41st Street. Together, they owned and operated Farm Crest Market, which for 22 years was Sioux Falls' best place to buy the juiciest watermelons and the perfect Christmas tree, usually with the greeting "Are you looking for something special today?" They also rehabbed and flipped dozens of houses in Sioux Falls, decades before HGTV made it cool. Their greatest accomplishment when asked, was always "raising four boys". They shared a morning cup of coffee together for almost 50 years before Lorin's death in 2011.

With a wry smile and a quick wit, Jeanne loved to entertain her friends and family on her front porch with a cold one or around her dining room table with a batch of baked beans or "roast beast." She could write a mean poem and make a humorous yet thoughtful greeting card. She knew and could correctly use every "Q" word in the Scrabble dictionary; indeed she was a "qaid" of the Scrabble board. And her pearls of wisdom were vast: "birds do not like old angel food cake" and "only lie when the occasion demands it."

A member of the Church of St Mary for 60 plus years - beginning only three years after the church itself was built - as well as being a 7th grade teacher at the school for several years, she staked out and sat in the same pew (left center aisle by the Sixth Station of the Cross) for decades, and she delighted in seeing her sons and then years later her granddaughters serve Mass. She also was a member of the St. Theresa Group #11 Altar Society of St. Mary and could always be counted on to work a luncheon or contribute a batch of her Blue Ribbon Brownies. She was an original member of the group of faithful who devoted an hour of their time each week to Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at the McKennan Hospital chapel. Like clockwork, she was in the chapel for an hour every Friday.

After getting her sons through college (no small feat), Jeanne focused on her love of local history. She spent two years researching and writing the book Here Lies Sioux Falls, published in 1992 and containing biographical stories of those who have shaped Sioux Falls, followed by a second book, Split Rock Influence, published in 1996 and chronicling the history along the creek as well as her own experiences with the creek. The Argus described her as having a "chatty writing style"; she preferred "folksy and historically accurate." She was a life member of the Minnehaha County Historical Society, serving two terms as the Board Treasurer, and wrote or edited the text of many of the historical plaques the Society has put up throughout the County.

She was a founding member of the Brandon Historical Society and served on the book committee for the publishing of the first history of Brandon, Brandon Area History: Over 125 Years of Heritage. Always persuasive with her pen, in 1997 she successfully lobbied the SD Department of Transportation to include Split Rock Creek on the SD Official Highway Map for the first time ever, something of which she was extremely proud. She passed away at Bethany Home in Brandon just down the road from Split Rock Creek and the farm of her youth.

Grateful for having shared in her love, wisdom, wit and faith are her sons and daughter-in laws, Christopher and Tracy of Marysville, OH, John and Lisa of Sioux Falls, David and Colleen of St. Louis, MO, and Paul and Erika of Fairview, TX; her 11 grandchildren: MJ, Connor, Sean, Suellin, Sarah, O'Connor, Tommy, Marytherese, Chase, Pierce and Elyce; and her sister and brother-in law Marilyn and Gary Cummings of Sioux Falls.

In addition to her husband and parents, she was preceded in death by her siblings Carol Engelkes, Alice Benard, Thomas Schulte and Robert Schulte.

The family requests that in lieu of flowers, memorials be directed to St. Mary Catholic School.

www.millerfh.com