Ernest Reimer

Wessington Springs, SD

1933, 1795, Doran, S-2,
1936, 2754, Wind Cave, DNP-1,
1937, 2754, Wind Cave, NP-1,

Ernest Reimer, age 91, of Savannah, Georgia, and formerly of Woonsocket, SD, died Monday, May 15, 2006, at St. Josephs Hospital at Savannah, Georgia.

His funeral service will be at 11:00 AM Friday, May 19th at the Welter Funeral Home with Bishop Allen Barton officiating with burial at 2:30 PM at Prospect Hill Cemetery at Wessington Springs. Friends may call Friday morning from 9:00 AM until the time of service at the Welter Funeral Home.

Ernest was born March 22, 1915 four miles north of Scotland, in Hutchinson County, SD to Rosina Meyer Reimer and William Reimer, Sr. Ernest is the oldest of fourteen children: nine boys and five girls. The family moved to Beadle county in 1917 where Ernest started his elementary education. In 1924 the family moved to Jerauld county. Due to very hard times, Ernest, by the age of ten, went to work helping farmers in the area, giving his meager earnings to his parents so they could buy necessities for the family.

In 1936, Ernest joined the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) where over the next two and one-half years he honed the art of stone masonry. To this day, his stone work can be seen at Wind Cave in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He received an honorable discharge from the CCC in 1939. Years do not match dates from CCC records and may simply be an error. Soon after returning home, he was drafted into the US Army, but due to an eye impairment was unable to serve in the Armed Forces.

He returned to farming in Jerauld county and there met Bernice Mary Voorhees and they were married January 11, 1943. They started their married life on the Gehan Ranch seventeen miles west and two north of Wessington Springs. On November 13, 1943, their only child, Delores, was born in Huron, Beadle, SD.

In 1947 they moved to the Cy Forbes farm one mile west and four north of Woonsocket, Sanborn, SD. They resided there for the next four years at which time they moved back west of Wessington Springs, to the Helmuth Mettler farm. Within a very short time, Ernest became very sick and was forced to give up farming. He and Bernice bought the old Frank Davis house in Woonsocket and lived there for the next eighteen years. For the 1956-57 school year, they moved to Spokane, WA where Ernest worked in a sawmill. In 1967, they bought a house in Lane, SD, and moved it to Woonsocket, where Ernest spent hundreds of hours utilizing his many skills in electrical wiring, carpentry, and plumbing to make a very comfortable home for his family.

Upon returning to Woonsocket, and for the next 30 years Ernest made a living for his family in the alfalfa/hay trucking business. Ernest and Bernice had a farm equipment sale in 1987 and he retired from farming. They moved to Savannah, GA in 2000 and have resided with their daughter and son-in-law.

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