Govenor of South Dakota Walter Dale Miller

by Effie Craig
(Atchison, Kansas)

I grew up in a small town called New Underwood South Dakota. My father was a preacher in Viewfield from when I was about 2 or so until we moved to Montana when I turned 12.

We lived in a parsonage on land that was owned by Walter Dale Miller. He was married at the time to Mary and had a daughter Nancy, a daughter Karie and a son Randy. We all went to a small one room school called Red Top.

Anyway, we lived across the creek and a few miles away from Walter Dale and could only call him Walter Dale. That's what my daddy told us. There were 6 of us kids and we lived in the parsonage with one bedroom, a living room/dining room, a small kitchen, one bathroom and a long hallway with a room at the end of it that we called our closet/laundry room. The laundry room had a bit of raised cement for the double-tub dexter where my mom used to wash our clothes. The long hallway had 3 sets of bunkbeds and a crib. My brother slept in the crib and my 4 sisters and my self slept on the bunk beds. We had hardwood floors that we got to shine by putting paste wax all over and then we dragged each other all over on rugs to put on the shine. We had a huge garage with a cedar "bedroom" for lack of a better room that my 3 older sisters got to sleep in when they got older.

Walter Dale would bring us a shetland pony to ride. We were allowed to have geese, chickens a lamb or 2, dogs, cats, and rabbits. If they found their way to me, I took care of them.

Anyway, after we moved from Viewfield, I still talked to my friends but lost track of the Millers. I heard from other friends that Mary had died but that he had another daughter some time later. I never met Pat, his current wife of many years.

When I got older and married (my husband who has since passed away) my parents had their 50th wedding anniversary at my sister's house in Utah. So my husband and I took his daughter who was 12 and my daughter who was 16 on a trip back to where I had grown up. The church had been moved from Viewfield to New Underwood and the house was no longer there.

We went on to Colorado, and Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas and so on back down to where we lived in Houston, Texas. This was back in 1989 or 1990. Apparently, Walter Dale heard about our trip and decided to find me in Houston (3 years later). I took my girls to a hotel in the Galleria area in Houston to meet him. He signed a card for each of the girls and we sat and talked for a couple of hours before we headed home. He gave me a card too but didn't sign it.

I was just curious as to if his signature was worth anything since he was Governor of South Dakota at the time and how would I find out if it was.