South Dakota
Daughter gives thanks for journey of deceased mother's quilt • South Dakota Searchlight
HURON — There are those rare times – very emotional, memorable instances – when all of the good things fall into place and the outcome is a heartwarming experience for everyone involved.
This is the story of one of those times.
It begins, oddly enough, at a neighborhood rummage sale in 2015 or 2016. What makes it odd, with what was to come, is that Jeanine Tschetter Greenwood is not really sure when she came across a partially completed quilt top, folded up and in a bag with other items.
“I remember taking it out and thinking to myself, ‘My gosh, someone has $2 marked on this!’”
The pieced top was in a classic quilt pattern referred to as “Trip Around the World.” Small identically sized squares, in this instance more than 1,200 of them, are sewn together in a concentric diamond shape. The pattern starts with a single central square, and the use of varied prints and contrasting colors accentuate the diamond design as it radiates outward.
Jeanine is quick to note that she is not a quilter. “Not like cutting little pieces of fabric and sewing them together into a pattern. I have done a tied baby quilt with a panel on it, but nothing to the extent of what I found in the bag.”
She thought that perhaps it could be a good winter project for when she and her husband Doug went to Arizona. Which is what she did. After washing and ironing the top to determine a size, she began working with a fabric store to select a border fabric that she added to the pieced top.
“I shared how I came upon the top with a woman at the shop and we both marveled at the work that had gone into the cutting and sewing the blocks.”
She went back to the store, selected fabric for the back and binding, the batting to layer between the top and the back and had the fabric store do the quilting. “They sewed the binding on the front,” Jeanine said, “then I took it home and stitched the binding to the back.”
She said that the quilt saw use in Arizona on the couples’ king-size bed, and, after she sold the property there, on her bed in Sioux Falls.
“Every time I saw the quilt or made the bed,” she recalls, “I thought about the work that some woman put into creating this beautiful quilt, only to have it end up in a bag at a rummage sale with a bunch of stuff.”
Every time I saw the quilt or made the bed, I thought about the work that some woman put into creating this beautiful quilt, only to have it end up in a bag at a rummage sale with a bunch of stuff.
– Jeanine Tschetter Greenwood
Jeanine grew up in Huron, graduating from Huron High School in 1970. She worked at Bell Telephone for 17 years, 15 years in Huron until the company closed the Huron location. She then moved to Rapid City with Bell and worked there for two years.
She had been married and had three children, but later divorced. While in Rapid City, she met Doug Greenwood, who was with the Air Force, and they married. His career took the couple to Germany for three years until he retired, when they moved to Huron.
“Doug grew up on the East Coast and always wanted to move there again,” Jeanine said. “So, when my youngest graduated high school, I was out of reasons for not going and we moved to New Hampshire.”
It didn’t take long to determine that living 45 miles away from work in Boston was difficult. A year of fighting traffic was enough and they moved to Sioux Falls.
During those years, Jeanine worked in various departments of the federal government, landing at the EROS Center when they returned to South Dakota in 2000. In 2012, Doug and Jeanine retired and within a couple of years, the increased population in Sioux Falls led them back to Huron in 2017.
While they lived in Sioux Falls after retirement, the couple owned a cabin at Lake Byron, spending time there throughout the summer, and it was on one of those summer trips to the area that Jeanine found herself at a rummage sale, set up in a garage in the alley behind 895 12th Street, SW.
“Doug was very big on not accumulating ‘STUFF’” Jeanine said. “He said ‘Jeanine, it’s just STUFF. Life doesn’t have to be about STUFF!’ So, it was really odd that I found myself at a rummage sale, looking at ‘stuff.’”
A short time later, Doug received a kidney transplant, as the effects of Agent Orange, with which he came in contact during the Vietnam War, caused issues. After the transplant, the couple returned to Sioux Falls to be nearer his medical provider.
“When we retired,” Jeanine said, “We had vowed to do what we could for as long as we could and we did just that.” Doug Greenwood passed away Sept. 11, 2023 – on Patriots Day.
“I decided that I didn’t want the Arizona property and ‘stuff,’” Jeanine said. “I sold it, packed up the things I wanted and headed home.” When she got back to Sioux Falls, she went through a storage unit and got rid of more “stuff.”
“But that quilt was always there,” she said. “I decided that I would do what I could to find someone – I figured a granddaughter – of the woman who had made the quilt and try to get it back to a member of her family.”
She didn’t have much to go on.
“I grew up there, remember,” she said. “And while I was at Bell, I had gained a pretty thorough knowledge of the area and remembered the neighborhood where I hit the rummage sale.”
Armed with a cup of coffee and a computer, she went to work, using Google Maps to zero in on the house. She used street view to be positive she was looking at the correct home.
Next, she turned to social media for some assistance.
“I posted pictures of the house and the garage, with the address, on the Facebook site ‘I grew up in Huron, South Dakota and damn proud of it!’” she said. “And a picture of the quilt. I guess I hoped someone would recognize the house, know who may have lived there and would share the information. But I didn’t know.”
That was on Oct. 21. The response was more than she could have expected. Dozens of people were commenting what they recalled and even more people were sharing Jeanine’s post.
Brenna Bowerman-Stark also grew up in Huron, and is a 2005 HHS graduate. She is a real estate photographer in Springfield, Mo., an area to which she moved after graduation.
When she checked her Facebook on Oct. 22, she was inundated with messages from friends of hers and those of her mother, pointing out the address with the same question: Didn’t you grow up there?
She had.
“I lived there with my mom and stepdad,” Brenna said. “My mother’s name was Melanie Haugen and my stepdad was Lee. Mom was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in September of 2004, only nine months after her diagnosis.”
After Melanie’s passing, Brenna and her twin brother, Bryan, moved in with her mother’s sister and lived there through graduation. She had planned to attend SDSU, but plans change. An opportunity to live with a family member and attend school in Missouri was too good to pass up. Brenna left Huron the summer after graduation.
“Brenna sent me a private message the next morning,” Jeanine said.
“I was forwarded your posting on the Huron page by multiple friends, in regards to a quilt you found at a rummage sale. I am almost certain that the woman who spent the time making that quilt was my mother, Melanie Haugen. The house pictured in your post is the one I grew up in and I am very familiar with it.”
Jeanine shared that Brenna told her Lee remarried, later passing away as did his spouse. The folks in charge of cleaning out the house had no knowledge or connection to anyone from more than a decade earlier.
“We never had the opportunity to claim any of Mom’s things after her passing,” Brenna said. “I had a photo of her with another quilt she made and shared that with Jeanine. I told her that I really appreciated her posting and sharing the quilt that Mom spent so much time making.”
Brenna said, thinking back to that conversation, that it was almost like her Mom was overseeing the process. “Mom had wanted ‘Dust in the Wind’ played at her funeral service,” Brenna recalled. “When my wife sent a message to Jeanine, with some details to demonstrate that we were who we said were, ‘Dust in the Wind’ came on the radio as she was leaving for work.”
Jeanine got Brenna’s address, folded the bulky quilt for one final time and put it in the mail.
“I stayed in touch with Brenna, letting her know when I mailed it and shared tracking information,” Jeanine said. “It was, ironically, scheduled to arrive the Saturday that they were hosting their wedding reception.”
Unfortunately, delivery didn’t take place until the Monday after the reception. “It would have been so great to have it arrive when all of my brothers and sister were there,” Brenna said. “It worked out in the end though.”
She said her niece Skylar, who was there for the reception, was scheduled to fly out on that Monday. “In fact, when we dropped her off at the airport, I got a notice that the quilt had been delivered.”
Brenna said she got home, opened the package, and for the first time held the quilt her mother had pieced together more than 20 years before. Someone with no connection to her family had rescued the quilt, finished it and then took the additional steps to find a family member and return it to them.
A short time later, Brenna got a call from Skylar. Skylar’s flight had been delayed and she ended up staying two more days.
“She is my mom’s first grandchild and the only one born before Mom passed,” Brenna said. “She slept under her grandma’s quilt both nights she stayed with us.”
“I do believe this is one of the final things she made,” Brenna said. “When Jeanine sent the photo it was familiar to me. Mom was always making something. Knitting, making candles – a lot of different things. And sewing and quilting.”
She added that an aunt suggested the quilt become a “traveling quilt,” moving among Melanie’s five children and their children. “But nothing is decided yet. Right now, I am just enjoying the quilt.”
“I just feel good about this,” Jeanine said. “We need to be kind – nobody knows what people are going through. I just feel that we can all help somewhere. I am glad that the quilt is back in the hands of the family of the person who made the quilt top and they will have it to love and cherish forever.”
When arrangements were underway to ship the heirloom, Brenna offered to pay for the postage, but Jeanine declined.
“I told her that she could consider it a wedding gift from her mom – and from me.”
“We’ve stayed in touch,” Jeanine added. “I hope that we can meet at some time.”
Brenna described how it feels to have a piece of her mother’s creation.
“Oh it’s perfect,” she said. “It’s big and it’s cozy. And it’s perfect.”
South Dakota
Work, housing and staffing: How South Dakota’s corrections chief aims to keep inmates from returning
SIOUX FALLS – South Dakota’s repeat offense rate for people who leave prison can return to the low point it saw a a dozen years ago, the state’s corrections secretary said Tuesday.
Nick Lamb, now six months into his role atop the Department of Corrections, laid out the agency’s plan Tuesday at the Correctional Rehabilitation Task Force at its meeting in Sioux Falls. The plan includes work release programs, residential housing for inmates and a top-to-bottom restructuring of how the department operates.
Recidivism measures how many inmates return to prison within three years of their release. The figure for South Dakota stood at
50%
in the most recent data, which was based on the performance of inmates released in 2021.
South Dakota’s lowest recidivism rate in the last two decades was 39% in 2014.
“We’ll get back there,” Lamb said Tuesday.
Lamb told reporters after the meeting he wants “to start getting in the business of closing prisons” during his tenure.
“Our population is too high for our state,” Lamb said. “We need to get our population down, but we’ve got to give the offenders the tools they need that they haven’t always had.”
Several recommendations presented on Tuesday, by Lamb and other criminal justice experts, will require more staff and funding.
State Rep. John Hughes, R-Sioux Falls, worries that the Legislature’s budget-setting committee will balk at new spending.
“My concern is that we put all these elaborate proposals together, then when we get to appropriations we’re going to hit the wall,” Hughes said.
Inmates return to work release
Under Lamb’s predecessor, Kellie Wasko, pay for inmate work performed outside the prison walls
was increased to minimum wage
. After that policy change, fewer communities and organizations contracted inmate workers for community service jobs.
Rep. Tim Reisch, R-Howard, said most of the roughly 250 minimum-security prisoners he oversaw during his tenure as corrections secretary participated in work release.
“They got up and they all had jobs. They were used to getting out of bed, going to work, getting in a habit of that,” Reisch said.
When he toured the prison last year, fewer than 20 were working, he said.
Lamb has cut inmate wages below minimum wage since he started.
“We reached out to a lot of these communities, basically asking if they need help,” Lamb said. “We lowered the wage, which upset some people, but we need them out working.”
This summer, inmates will work at Sioux Falls parks and at its regional landfill, and they’ll prepare the fairgrounds in Huron for the State Fairgrounds in August. They’ll also help out during Riverboat Days in Yankton, and pitch in on tournament preparation for the National Field Archery Association.
Statewide residential facilities planned
Lamb also wants to establish a residential corrections program. He shared a presentation showing how such a program
operated in Iowa
, where he served as deputy director of institutional operations for the Iowa Department of Corrections before his move to South Dakota.
In Iowa, most residential facilities were filled with people on probation, parole or work release. He envisions a similar program in South Dakota, with housing outside of traditional prison settings designed to help transition back into the community, but he hasn’t finalized details or a timeline.
“We’re going to try it,” Lamb said. “I’ll be honest, I haven’t talked to the lieutenant governor or anybody else about it, but we need to try it. It works.”
The program has been in Iowa for decades. Iowa’s three-year recidivism rate peaked at 38.9% in 2019 and has since fallen to 32.8%, based on the
latest data available
.
“I’m not trying to throw you a sales pitch,” Lamb said, but residential programming is “a good idea.”
Lamb said he doesn’t want to replace programs like the one run by the Sioux Falls-based nonprofit St. Francis House, but to add to it.
St. Francis House doesn’t cap how long residents can stay and limits rent to $250 a month. Lamb said a state-run program would include a time limit and higher rent.
A lack of “felon-friendly housing” is a major driver of recidivism, said Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken, who’s leaving his position soon after two terms in office. The problem won’t improve without government involvement, he added.
“If the state ever chooses to invest in St. Francis House programming, it’s money well spent,” TenHaken said.
Justice Center recommendations
The percentage of inmates who got rehabilitative programming increased from 27%to 44% between 2023 and 2025, according to a report presented Tuesday by the Council for State Governments Justice Center.
The national nonprofit was contracted to analyze the state’s prison system and help guide the task force’s work.
Despite the gains in programming, the group reported, 46% of inmates released in 2025 received none. Access was also limited by where inmates were held, due to space and staffing restrictions.
The justice center recommended several changes, including:
- Creating a rehabilitation and reentry division and hiring several new positions.
- Creating a centralized waitlist for programs.
- Streamlining the program catalog to reduce overlap and fill gaps.
- Sequencing programming to cover an inmate’s entire stay, rather than stacking programs in the last few months of their sentence.
- Creating a dedicated parole violation program track.
Many of those recommendations hinge on hiring and retaining adequate staff — one of the department’s most significant challenges, according to the group.
Sara Friedman, program director with the Justice Center, said her team consistently heard in interviews that the department tends to shift employees around when attempting new initiatives, rather than hiring. That creates gaps for inmates seeking programming.
Sometimes, for example, shifting staffing patterns will leave facilities without enough security staff to transport inmates to classrooms.
“Technically, you’re fully staffed, but you’re fully staffed so thinly that the moment one thing goes wrong, the waterfall effect is people are not getting their rehabilitative services,” Friedman said.
Lamb told South Dakota Searchlight after the presentation that he wasn’t surprised by the staffing recommendations. The department lacks adequate staff to backfill for sick or vacationing employees, he said, though he didn’t say how many more employees would need to be hired to address the issue.
The department is already working to create the new rehabilitation and reentry division and centralize its scheduling.
The task force plans to meet two more times before it’ll finalize its recommendations for the Legislature ahead of the next session, which starts in January.
— This story was originally published on southdakotasearchlight.com.
South Dakota Republican delegates rejected a push to censure Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) over the stalled SAVE America Act, exposing a fight within the GOP over how far the party should go to force through sweeping new voting restrictions.
South Dakota Republicans voted down a proposed censure of Thune at the state party convention Friday after a resolution accused him of blocking President Donald Trump’s election agenda.
The measure had advanced out of the party’s Resolutions Committee, but failed before the full convention.
The resolution targeted Thune for what it called “his failure in regards to the SAVE America Act,” a Republican-backed bill that would impose strict proof-of-citizenship and photo ID requirements to vote.
Voting rights advocates have warned the bill could block millions of eligible Americans from registering, especially people who do not have easy access to passports, birth certificates or documents matching their current names.
Trump has sharply escalated pressure on Republicans to pass the bill. This week, he abruptly canceled a planned signing ceremony for a bipartisan housing affordability bill, tying the unrelated legislation to his demand that Congress first pass the SAVE America Act.
“Today’s Housing News Conference and Signing is hereby cancelled until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency,” Trump wrote.
The censure push reflects growing anger among Trump allies who want Senate Republicans to change or bypass filibuster rules to pass the bill. A filibuster is a Senate procedure that usually requires 60 votes to move most legislation forward. Republicans do not have those votes.
“We don’t have the votes, either to proceed to a talking filibuster nor to sustain one if we got one,” Thune said last week. “That’s just a function of math. There isn’t anything I can do about that.”
For pro-democracy advocates, the fight is not simply about Thune. It is about a broader Republican effort to turn Trump’s election denialism into federal policy. Noncitizen voting is already illegal and exceedingly rare.
But the SAVE America Act would use that false crisis to create new barriers for eligible voters.
The South Dakota vote shows the limits of MAGA pressure even in a deep-red state. Delegates were willing to debate punishing their own Senate majority leader, but ultimately rejected escalating the internal fight.
Still, the episode underscores how central voting restrictions have become to the Republican agenda ahead of the midterms.
South Dakota
17 Republican attorneys general, including South Dakota’s, sue California over plastics law
Seventeen Republican attorneys general, including South Dakota’s, have sued California over a state law that requires plastic packaging producers to move away from single-use plastics, alleging that the law will raise costs for consumers across the country.
Led by Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers and the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors, the
complaint
filed Monday in the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of California challenges California’s Plastics Act. Under the law, which took effect May 1, plastic packaging producers
must reduce single-use plastic
by 25% and ensure all packaging is recyclable or compostable by 2032.
Joining Hilgers in the lawsuit are the attorneys general of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and West Virginia. They say the law is an attempt by California “to impose its own policy preferences on the entire nation.”
The law “will cause steep and persistent price increases” on products used daily by consumers in other states, the plaintiffs argue.
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley said in a news release that the California law “imposes unreasonable, burdensome requirements on businesses and consumers nationwide.”
The attorneys general also assert that the law violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution by interfering with interstate commerce, and that it improperly extends regulatory authority to a private organization. California appointed a nonprofit, the Circular Action Alliance, to help develop, administer and implement the law.
“Once again, California is trying to enact a policy that negatively impacts the rest of the country. If California goes unchecked, consumers will be forced to pay more for basic necessities,” Hilgers said in a news release. “Nebraska is continuing to fight for consumers against California’s overreach.”
Environmental advocacy groups also
sued
California earlier this month, alleging the new regulations “fall short” in meeting the state’s aims of reducing plastic packaging, and that they contain loopholes for producers.
— This story was originally published on southdakotasearchlight.com.
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