Eminent Homemaker
County: Meade
Twenty-one years after her father, Enos Blair, had been named Eminent Farmer, Janice Snyder received the Eminent Homemaker honor.
As a young bride in 1929, Janice saw her husband's mother fear the electric stove "because it had too many buttons. "It was at that point she resolved for herself that she would keep up with the newest appliances forever and not be afraid to learn or change. "But," she said with a twinkle, "my calculator with all those buttons has about got me beat."
Her quest for learning and her interest in teaching other have been dominant throughout her adult life. She is a 33-year, recently retired volunteer 4-H leader and a 50-year Extension Homemaker. She has passed her life-long interest in wildflowers, grasses and conservation to her eldest grandson and she practices gardening full-scale in her one-acre yard.
When the Snyders planned to build a new house in 1945, she headed straight for the Meade County Extension Office where she picked up bulletins and fact sheets and planned--for four years. She looked at magazines, studied house plans and construction methods, learned about modern conveniences and appliances, drew plans, built furniture and appliances to scale and arranged them inside a cardboard replica of the house she wished to have. That wish came true. She said, "Clifford did everything I wanted him to do--from the site to the placement of electrical outlets."
The couple sees things eye-to-eye, a trait they passed on to their children. That's what makes their three-generation ranching operation a success.
The Snyders are active members of the state and national Stockgrowers Associations, Farm Bureau, State Archaeological Society, Westerners International, Piedmont Senior Citizens, Darton Geology Society, South Dakota Historical Society, Old Ft. Meade Museum, Republican Party and the Presbyterian Church where she plays in the bell choir.
Snyder holds membership in the local, state and national CowBelles, Order of the Eastern Star, Daughters of the Nile, Sturgis Art Association, Country Culture Club, Idle Hour Club, Green Thumb Garden Club, Republican Women and the local and state levels of the Daughters of the American Revolution. During the past years she was active in Job's Daughters, Western Jr. Livestock and Home Economics Show Board, County 4-H Board, the local election board, taught Sunday school and served in offices on the local and district levels of the United Presbyterian Women.
Sharing the honor with her are her husband, Clifford; her son, Dean of Piedmont; and her daughter, Angenette Schemmel of Pipestone, Minnesota; their spouses and her five grandchildren.