Eminent Homemaker
County: Hyde
Elizabeth Naughton, Miller, is known by her friends and family as someone who is always the first to give someone else credit for a job well done and for putting herself last.
Many of the people that she has put first over the years feel that she is very deserving of the honor of 1980 Eminent Homemaker that was bestowed on her by the South Dakota Board of Regents and South Dakota State University.
Naughton is a religious woman and she has passed her faith on to her family. She has been an active participant in church activities during her 78 years.
Through the years she has made and cared for altar linens, sang in the choir, taught Catechism and served in every office of the Altar Society several times during her 54-year membership, has been a Catholic Daughter since 1944 where she served as an officer for 17 years, is a member of the Legion of Mary Auxiliary and a Bethlehem sponsor and taught Confraternity of Christian Doctrine for ten years.
Naughton is a 52-year Extension homemaker and during that time she has served the Thimble Club in Hyde County, the Blaine-Lincoln Club in Sully County, the Progressive Club in Hand County, the Chapelle Pratte Holabird and G.G.G. Clubs in Hyde County.
She could always be counted on when a committee was appointed or a volunteer was needed. She attended the National Extension Homemakers Convention in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1948 and participated in several state meetings.
Naughton served on an election board for 16 years, was an American Cancer Society volunteer for ten years, a Red Cross volunteer for five years, a Sister Kenny Institute canvasser for ten years, State Democratic Educational director for two years, an agriculture and population census enumerator and has spent hours visiting the less fortunate in nursing homes, reading to them and writing letters for them.
She has written a book, yet unpublished, “Smoke on the Horizon,” about the Hyde County prairie fire of 1947 which “changed the course of our lives.”
Widowed in 1979, she has three daughters: Madonna Lewis is a housewife, mother of four and a part-time nurse in a rest home in Miller; Rita Mathews is a graduate of St. John’s School of Nursing, the mother of seven children and a farm wife in Wessington; and Ann Goldsmith is an instructional assistant in the Salem, Oregon, school system and is the mother of five children.