Obituary Record

Hilda Neihardt
Died on 12/27/2004

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Enterprise 31 Dec 2004

Hilda Neihardt, 88

Hilda Neihardt, 88, died Dec. 27, 2004, at the home of her daughter. A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Friday, Dec. 31, at the John G. Neihardt State Historic Site in Bancroft.

Hilda Neihardt was born Dec. 6, 1916, in Bancroft, to Nebraska Poet Laureate John G. Neihardt and Mona (Martinsen) Neihardt.

She was her father’s “comrade in adventure”, and, at the age of 15, “official observer” to his meetings with Black Elk, the Lakota holy man, which was the basis for his book, Black Elk Speaks.

She attended Wayne State College and received her undergraduate degree from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. After graduation, she worked for the Swiss consulate in St. Louis, Mo. In 1944, she joined the WAVES and, while in the service, sang with the Ray Charles Orchestra on the “Waves on Parade” radio program, broadcast from Hunter College in New York City. She later transferred to Pasco, Wash., where she served as a control tower operator.

In 1960, she entered the University of Missouri-Columbia Law School, graduating with a JD degree in 1963. She was the first woman to practice law in central Missouri and, during her years in Columbia, she was instrumental in obtaining the land and doing the legal work for the creation of the Rock Bridge State Park.

After retiring, she became active promoting the works of her father. Her first two books, The End of the Dream and Other Stories and The Giving Earth, are compilations representative of all Neihardt writings. She authored Black Elk and Flaming Rainbow, her personal memoirs of the Lakota holy man and her father. She co-edited Black Elk Lives; Conversations with the Black Elk Family, and had just completed the book, The Broidered Garment, which relates the story of her parents and is to be published in 2005 by the Nebraska Press.

In 1999, she received the first “Word Sender Award” from the John G. Neihardt Foundation. Her book, Black Elk Lives, was the non-fiction winner of the 2001 Nebraska Book Awards Program, sponsored by the Nebraska Center for the Book. A special ceremony awarding her an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Wayne State College was held in June 2004.

Hilda Neihardt married Albert J. Petri on April 18, 1945. Three children survive; Gail Toedebusch of Richmond, Ind., Robin Neihardt of Laveen, Ariz,, and Coralie Hughes of Coatesville, Ind. She is also survived by six grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and a sister, Alice N. Thompson of Columbia, Mo.; nieces and a nephew.

In Lieu of flowers, memorials are suggested to the John G. Neihardt Foundation, PO Box 344, Bancroft, NE 68004.

~~~ Obituary courtesy of the Washington County Genealogical Society. Newspaper clippings on file in the Blair Public Library at Blair, Nebraska.~~~

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