Funeral services for Lila White, 85, of Hettinger, formerly of the Glendo, SD area will be Saturday, March 12, 2011 at 1:00 p.m. at the Centennial Chapel (Formerly the First Congregational Church in Hettinger) of Evanson Jensen Funeral Home. Visitation will be from 11:00 a.m. until the service on Saturday afternoon at the Centennial Chapel.

Lila Mae Wilkinson was born March 4, 1925 at Glendo, South Dakota, the fourth of eight children born to Lydia (Smith) and Harvey Wilkinson. Harvey's parents founded Glendo and after they died, Harvey and Lydia ran the Glendo Store and post office until they lost it to taxes during the "dirty thirties". They moved the family to their homestead along Big Nasty Creek. Harvey died when Lila was eleven, leaving Lydia a widow with eight young children. The older children, Lila included, worked away from home to help Lydia pay off the debt and move back to the home ranch at Glendo where Lydia continued to run the post office.


Forest "Bryce" White was home on leave from the Army when he was told that a young girl working in the Strool area looked a lot like a picture he had of a pretty girl he'd met in France, so Bryce made a special effort to meet Lila at a dance in Strool. Lila was equally impressed by the handsome soldier and in December 19, 1944 they were married in Baker, Montana while Bryce was recuperating from wounds he received while "vacationing on the sunny beaches of Anzio" in WWII. They lived at the Army base in Hot Springs, Arkansas until the war was over in 1945 and they came home to South Dakota.


The state was building a new highway two miles north of old Highway 8 that ran through Strool, SD. Bryce used money from the GI bill to buy land from Lila's uncle, Sam Smith, to build a café and gas station along the new Highway 8, now Highway 20. In doing so, he became the Founding Father of the new town of Prairie City. Everyone in the old town of Strool packed up and moved the two miles north to join the new community, leaving nothing but a few graves in the cemetery to mark what had once been a prosperous little village.


Two daughters were born to Bryce and Lila while they lived in Prairie City. Betty Mae was born April 19, 1946 and Judy Ann was born on Bryce's birthday, December 11, 1947.


The family moved to Bison in the spring of 1952 where Bryce became the telephone repairman and lineman for the Sorum Telephone Company and Lila became the full-time switchboard operator. West River Telephone bought out Sorum Telephone in 1959 and Bryce and Lila went back into the restaurant business, opening White's Truck Stop and Café north of Highway 20.


In 1966 when daughter Judy started college at the School of Mines in Rapid City, Lila took a business course at Mitchell Technical School in Mitchell, graduating with a business degree.


Bryce and Lila sold the café and gas station in the seventies and bought a little place near Lodgepole they called Cow Camp where they ran livestock. Bryce invented what he called his "wind machine" and was hired by the Upper Missouri Corporation to build one for them on a high bluff above the Missouri River east of Pierre. Lila and Bryce moved to Pierre until the project was completed and they returned to Perkins County.


As a proud descendent of the Fullers that came to America on the Mayflower in 1620, Lila was very interested in genealogy and traced her family's lineage back to Charlemagne, King of the Franks and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire (742 – 814), and to Rev. John Lathrop, forefather of American presidents, statesmen, university presidents, prominent churchmen, inventors, poets, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.


Suffering from several debilitating health issues, Lila has been a resident of Western Horizons Care Center for the last few years and was grateful for the good care and companionship she received there. She was surrounded by caring people as her death became imminent and she died peacefully on March 3, 2011 just one day before her 86th birthday.


Lila is survived by her daughters, Betty (Reuben) Olson of Prairie City, SD and Judy (Ken) Amor of Bison, SD; sisters Violet Krambeer, Buffalo, SD and Bessie Campbell, Mesa, AZ, brothers Stanley (Patsy) Wilkinson, Prairie City, SD and Harold (Esther) Wilkinson, Frazee, MN, and sister-in-law Alice Wilkinson, Buffalo, SD; eight grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren and numerous nieces, nephews and cousins.


She was preceded in death by her husband Bryce, her parents, sisters Daisy Wilkinson and Dorothy Spangler and her brother Glen Wilkinson.