Introduction: Emmy-nominated screenwriter Dorothy Cooper Foote was born in Vermillion, SD in 1911. She was also a USD alum who graduated in 1933 with a degree in journalism. After moving to California, she soon began to work her way up the ranks at Universal Studios. Under the name Dorothy Cooper, she wrote such films as “On an Island With You,” “Small Town Girl,” “A Date With Judy” and the TV shows “Father Knows Best,” “My Three Sons,” “Gidget,” “Love on a Rooftop,” “The Flying Nun” and “Hazel.” Ms. Foote was nominated for an Emmy for her work on the Robert Young TV series “Father Knows Best.” She was also nominated for a Writer’s Guild Award as the co-writer of the Esther Williams film “On an Island With You.” Dorothy wrote the first episode for Father Knows Best and won several awards for the series, including the Sylvania Award for outstanding achievement in creative television technique. She would also receive two Emmy Award writing nominations and win the Television-Radio Writers Award for An Old Flame, the best script for episodic comedy in 1959-1960. History: Dorothy, age 8 Dorothy Christy Wright was born on September 30, 1911, to Harry and Jessie (Christy) Wright in Vermillion, South Dakota. Her father was the Vermillion postmaster, and their family resided at 415 East Clark Street, across from Slagle Hall. This eventually became the home of University of South Dakota political science professor, Dr. William O. Farber. While attending USD, Dorothy majored in journalism, was a member of the Chi Omega sorority and edited the Wet Hen, a campus humor magazine. She gained notoriety on campus for creating the “Kissable Lips” contest. Contemplating a script, 1943 Dorothy graduated from USD in 1933 and moved to California where she began working as a telephone operator at Universal Studios. Dorothy then showed initiative four years later by writing a letter to Val Paul, a producer, stating that she was interested in writing. Her bold attempts to get a promotion were successful. She was an extra in the 15-episode movie serial, Flaming Frontiers (1938), starring Johnny Mack Brown. Soon after, she was appointed as an assistant script editor. Dorothy moved her way up the studio ranks and eventually began to write screenplays for movies. Her first motion picture screenplay was A Date with Judy (1948), an MGM musical in Technicolor starring Jane Powell, Wallace Berry, Carmen Miranda, and Elizabeth Taylor. This was followed by four other musicals starring Esther Williams, June Allyson, Van Johnson, Jimmy Durante, and Ricardo Montalban–On an Island with You(1948), Small Town Girl (1953), Duchess of Idaho (1950), and Rich, Young and Pretty (1951). 1958 With the advent of television in the 1950s, Dorothy began to write screenplays for television sitcoms. She wrote the pilot episode for Father Knows Best and won numerous awards for this series including the Sylvania Award for outstanding achievement in creative television technique. She received two Emmy Awards and won the Television-Radio Writers Award for her work on An Old Flame as the best script for episodic comedy in 1959-1960. Dorothy also continued to write for such sitcoms as My Three Sons, Hazel, Gidget, Love on a Rooftop, and The Flying Nun during the 1960s. Dakota Days 1984 Dorothy returned to Vermillion in 1964 when the University of South Dakota named her honorary marshal for the Dakota Days parade. After retiring in the late 1970s, she remained active by writing two musical plays (This is Heaven? and Scots on the Rock), working with charitable organizations, serving as a judge for screenwriters’ contests, and acting as a consultant on various manuscripts for other writers. Dorothy was married three times; her first marriage to G. Leslie Cooper and her second was to Paul R. Cerf. On October 6, 1956, she wed Robert “Bob” Foote, a prominent Los Angeles surgeon and medical school professor. Dr. Foote was a graduate of Alfred University in Alfred, New York and received his medical degree from the College of Medicine of the State University of New York in Brooklyn. They had several homes including residences in Bakersfield, Malibu, Dana Point, and Palm Desert in California. They particularly enjoyed sailing on their boat, The Libertine. Rhett Butler Dorothy loved dogs, and throughout her life canines were always her constant companions. In the 1970s and 1980s, she and her husband owned Great Danes, the last of which was named “Rhett Butler.” Dorothy (Wright) Cooper Foote died on at the age of 93 on November 26, 2004, at her home in Palm Desert. Her husband, Dr. Robert Foote, passed away on April 5, 2002. Text taken from an online exhibit done for the Archives and Special Collections by Gayla Koerting. Images by Danielle Loftus.

The Herman P. Chilson Collection of Western Americana, located in the Archives and Special Collections, includes books, journals, maps, pamphlets, and other print materials relating to local histories, South Dakota history, Native American cultures, and United States western expansion. The Chilson Collection is cataloged and information about items in the collection can be found using the library catalog. Learning about birds and watching birds was one of Mr. Chilson’s many interests, and he included ornithology books in his 1979 donation to the University of South Dakota. One of the books on ornithology is The Passenger Pigeon, written by W.B. Mershon and published in 1907. This book includes many contemporary accounts of the passenger pigeon and its decline. September 1, 2014, will be the 100th anniversary of the death of Martha, the last passenger pigeon (Discover September 2014, p. 70).

In addition to books, magazines, pamphlets, and ephemera, the Mahoney Music Collection also contains unpublished material, such as: All About Violin Varnish : Its Manufacture And Application. Gould, John A. Illustrations To Old Violins And Their Value Fleming, James M. John Gould’s Violin Instrument Appraisals – 1945-1984 Gould, John Sur Sylvestre, Luthier Morel de Voleine, L. John Mahoney, creator of this collection, has suggested that the unpublished material would make good student projects. Researching the background and the creator of any of these items would be a fun and valuable endeavor. Can you imagine the information that can be gleaned from violin appraisals done over such a long period of time from one location?

Image is from the Albert Sidney Frost papers. He was a colonel in the 1st Regiment, South Dakota Volunteers while they were in the Philippines for the Spanish American War.

“Joseph [William Lincoln] Parmley [1861-1940] wore many hats during his career – homesteader, stockman, publisher, real-estate agent, politician, promoter of Missouri River development, and advocate of world peace. He is best remembered, however, for his work for good roads in South Dakota and his role in creating the Yellowstone Trail (United State Highway 12).” The J.W. Parmley papers at the Archives and Special Collections is a small collection consisting mostly of photographs showing Edmunds County agriculture. The collection does contain one folder labeled Edmunds County Pioneer Tells His Story. Quote is from Dakota Images, South Dakota History, Winter 1999, 39:4, 364. This article also contains Parmley’s biography and his portrait. Image is from the J.W. Parmley papers.

We are honored to have a collection of Vietnam War veterans’ oral history transcripts in the Archives and Special Collections. This collection contains interviews with 33 veterans from central South Dakota gathered between September 1984 and December 1985. “Their service in Southeast Asia spans 1961 through 1975 and covers a wide variety of combat and noncombat duties. They are from all branches of the military and from a wide variety of social backgrounds.” The veterans and project methodologies are further described in the project’s publications which are also in the collection. These oral histories were gathered by the South Dakota Vietnam Veterans Oral History Project, sponsored by the Vietnam Era Veterans Association, Inc. and the Robinson Museum, Pierre, South Dakota. For more Vietnam War era veterans’ oral histories, contact the South Dakota Oral History Center at the University of South Dakota. April 30, 2015, will be the 40th anniversary of fall of Saigon. Quote from: Thomas C. Magedanz. South Dakota Vietnam Veterans Oral History Project: Project Description and Interview Directory. Pierre, South Dakota: Vietnam Era Veterans Association, Inc. and Robinson Museum, 1986.

Today is the 100th anniversary of Joe Foss’s birth. The following summary is from the guide to his papers at the Archives and Special Collections: Collection size 21 linear ft. “Joseph J. Foss remains an important figure in South Dakota history. He was born on a farm outside of Sioux Falls, South Dakota on April 17, 1915. Foss received a business degree from the University of South Dakota in 1940. For his service as a pilot in the United States Marine Corps, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. Foss resigned from the Marine Corps Reserve in 1946 and accepted command of the newly formed South Dakota Air National Guard in 1947. Following his return to South Dakota, Foss was elected as a member of the South Dakota House of Representatives in 1948 and 1952. He served two terms as governor of South Dakota, from 1955-1959. Commissioner of the American Football League, vice-president of Raven Industries, president of the National Rifle Association and president of the National Society for Crippled Children and Adults from 1969-1971 are additional professional activities in which Foss was engaged. He hosted his own television show entitled “The Outdoorsman: Joe Foss.” Foss, along with his wife Donna Wild Foss, wrote A Proud American: the autobiography of Joe Foss. Joe Foss died on January 1, 2003.”

Maganga By A.M. (Alfons Michael) Dauer Trephination, the act or process of making a hole in the skull by drilling and/or removing a piece of the bone, is believed by many to be an early form of brain surgery. It is found in Neolithic Europe, pre-Columbian America and in other places in the world during various time periods. In the Health Science Rare books, one of the collections in the Archives and Special Collections, I have found a copy of Maganda, which is a movie that I think shows someone trephining the skull of a living person. I haven’t seen the movie yet since the archives doesn’t have a 16mm film projector. This is how the University of Washington Educational Media Collection catalog describes it: “A trephination to relieve severe headache, performed by an experienced witch doctor under unsterile conditions and without the benefit of anesthesia, is the highlight of this unusual film which shows that witch-doctoring is by no means a thing of the past. Designed as a piece of medical entertainment in which are collected interesting and unique scenes on African medicine. (NOTE: The attempts at humor are somewhat ethnocentric and the narration is, at times, condescending; however, the footage on the trephination remains striking.)” The catalog record also gives a film date of 1963. http://www.css.washington.edu/emc/title/1753. (Accessed May 30, 2014.)

The Archives and Special Collections has the Map of the Missouri River: from its mouth to Three Forks, Montana, published by the Missouri River Commission in 1892-1895 on eighty-four sheets plus nine index sheets. With this mapping expedition, “modern mapping had arrived, and the river was now mapped with precision from its mouth to Three Forks.” “Later mapping made only minute improvements on these maps, principally in recording its ever-changing channel and in documenting the destruction of the river as a free-flowing natural stream in the post-World War II period” (Wood 1984). The Archives and Special Collections doesn’t have all the sheets in this set. We own sheets XXVII-XLVI, which encompass the South Dakota stretch of the Missouri River, and we have accompanying index sheets IV and V. Our set does not include the legend for this map, but I found it in the Nebraska Memories digital library. Indicated are shoreline triangulation stations (secondary), sawmills, cemeteries, roads, fences, levees, benches, orchards, forests (deciduous), forests (evergreen), bushes, willows, benchmarks, churches, section corners, railways, county & reservation lines, state lines, dikes, cultivated lands, sand bars, grass, lakes & marshes, and bluffs. The call number in our library for this map is 1472 M5 1895 U545. The image above is sheet XXIX, showing the Vermillion SD area. Information is from: Nebraska Memories. “Map of the Missouri River: from its mouth to Three Forks, Montana.” Accessed September 2, 2015. http://memories.nebraska.gov/cdm/ref/collection/opl/id/1284. Wood, W. Raymond. “Mapping the Missouri River through the Great Plains, 1673-1895.” 1984, 29-42.

The Mahoney Music Collection in the Archives and Special Collections contains wonderful books related to violin construction, which include but are not restricted to books about varnishes and woods. Below is just a sample. Hammerl, Josef, Reiner Hammerl and Jess Nierenberg. Violin varnishes: interesting information on resins and basic materials for violin varnish and advice on varnishing. W. Germany: Josef u. Reiner Hammerl, [1988?]. ML845 .G3413 1988 Brough, J. C. S. Staining and polishing, including varnishing & other methods of finishing wood: with a complete index of fifteen hundred references. Philadelphia: Lippincott, [1918]. TT325 .B76 1918 Robinson, John Stuart. The Guarneri mold and modern violin making. Oklahoma City, OK: J.S. Robinson, c1982. ML802 .R62 1982 Vettori, Carlo. I quartetti della liuteria italiana: the quartets of Italian violin making. Firenze, Italy: 2006. ML750. V47 2006 Hough, Romeyn Beck. Hough’s encyclopaedia of American woods. 8 volumes and 3 sample books. New York: R. Speller, 1957-1979. SD536 .H832