Crazy Horse breaks ground on student living-learning center
Having just announced the operation’s gift financing in July, donors returned Sunday to help break ground for a $2.5 million Native American student living and learning center at Crazy Horse Memorial.
The dormitory complex is planned on the nonprofit memorial’s property fronting U.S. Highway 16-385 near Echo Valley Road and Heritage Avenue, north of Custer. The area is now an occasional cattle pasture adjoining the Mickelson Trail.
The facility, combining classrooms and a 40-unit student residence hall, is scheduled to open in midsummer next year. The Native American residents would work at the memorial, which has offered state accredited university classes and provided scholarships for Native Americans for years.
The living-learning center will be among the memorial’s first for the private university and medical training center planned since the nonprofit memorial for Native Americans started in 1948.
Donor Donna “Muffy” Christen of Huron, her husband, Paul, and members of memorial founder Korczak Ziolkowski’s family watched as fellow project backer T. Denny Sanford of Sioux Falls turned the sod to start the learning center.
For Sanford, South Dakota’s well-known banker-philanthropist, it was the first time at uncounted groundbreaking ceremonies that he actually ran the bulldozer to begin the work.
“That was a fun experience, it was a wonderful way to have a groundbreaking,” Sanford said after peeling back about 15 yards of earth with coaching by Mark Ziolkowski in the D-6 Caterpillar. “I’m thinking in another hour or two I could learn how to run one of those darn things, really learn how to run it.”
The Crazy Horse Memorial mountain carving loomed in the background.
Korczak Ziolkowski ran drills and bulldozers in blocking out the shape of the Native American rider and horse until his death in 1982. His plan calls for surrounding the mountain with a museum, visitor center and university and medical training center, all dedicated to honoring and helping North American Indians.
Muffy Christen in July established the Crazy Horse Centennial endowment fund with an initial $2.5 million donation. Investments supervised by the nonprofit South Dakota Community Foundation will generate yearly earnings to help fund the school’s operations.
Christen’s personal endowment eventually will total $5 million and be open to contributions from others.
Christen is a former director of First Western Banks and chairwoman of First Western Bancorp, Inc. She currently leads the Christen Group community investment group in Huron.
Christen said memorial chief executive officer Ruth Ziolkowski, 83, inspired her to establish the endowment to help the school project.
“When she came up with this residents’ hall, it warmed my heart, absolutely. My theory is, the mountain carving will get done, but in the meantime she needs to see in her lifetime the residents’ hall and the university for the Native Americans, which was Korczak’s and her dream in the first place.”
Christen said starting the dormitory took “teamwork” of the memorial foundation’s board of directors, employees, visitors, the Ziolkowski family and donors, including Sanford.
Sanford in 2007 provided a $5 million challenge that matches every dollar that other donors specify for the world’s largest mountain carving in progress. The largest gift in the memorial’s history, the Sanford fund has attracted $3 million in matched giving.
For the memorial’s overall humanitarian and cultural goals, Sanford credited the Christens’ leadership.
“They really spearheaded that whole (dormitory) program, where mine is the mountain. I want the mountain done” he said. “But they came to the challenge. They are a wonderful couple and I appreciate their dedication to the cause as well.”