Eminent Homemaker
County: Potter
Arthur W. (Gyda) Keller, Tolstoy, is being recognized because of her energy, enthusiasm and reliability in promoting worthwhile 4-H and homemakers’ projects.
Gyda Buflod was born in 1910 on a farm near Lebanon, in Potter County. When she married Author W. Keller in 1933 and quit teaching rural schools, she was certain it meant the last of her teaching. However, after 37 years as a member of Springs Extension Club in rural Tolstoy, 22 years as a 4-H leader of the Springs Successful Striving Sisters 4-H Club, becoming a mother three times and now a grandmother of 14, Keller realizes that she could never have quit “teaching”— even if she wanted to.
Keller was Extension Homemaker’s Council District 7 chairman in 1953-54 and was 1953 delegate to the international meeting of the Associated Country Women of the World in Toronto, Canada. Mrs. Keller has served on state homemakers’ council committees, held several posts on the Potter County Extension Homemakers’ Council and served as vice chairman of the Potter County Fair Board. Keller has a reputation among county agents as “the volunteer home economics agent in northeast Potter County.” She has been a Sunday school teacher in the United Methodist Church of Tolstoy since 1940, is chairman of the Methodist Church’s Commission on Education and is retiring president of WSCS.
Her husband and their son, Lloyd, 35, operate a family farm in partnership. Jointly, they won the Potter County Conservation District Achievement Award in the Greater South Dakota Association Contest in 1966. A daughter, Reuben (Agnes) Schott, 29, on a farm near McLaughlin, taught schools on Standing Rock Indian Reservation. Another daughter, James (Edith) Hepper, 33, lives on a Tolstoy area farm.
In 4-H work, Mrs. Keller emphasizes the importance of older members teaching younger members and feels, “It never hurts boys and girls to work.”