The Schmiedts and South Dakota State have been linked for a century, and now the connection includes selection as Family of the Year by the South Dakota State University Alumni Association.
The family was honored March 2 at an awards luncheon at the Alumni Center and then at the women’s basketball game that afternoon.
While the first six Schmiedt family members to graduate from State were pharmacy majors, through the years their academic interests have widened while their devotion to their alma mater has not waned.
The line begins with Edgar ’25 and continues with brothers Ruben ’28 and Alvin ’29, all graduating when the pharmacy program was a two-year program. Through the years, another seven in the Schmiedt family have chosen pharmacy. Counting those who have married into the family, there are 21 in the family that graduated from State.
The fifth generation is a few years away, but 2003 pharmacy graduate Allison Akin has a 14-year-old son who is a freshman at Elk Point-Jefferson High School.
Just what attracted the initial Schmiedt brothers to pharmacy is lost to history, but for newer generations, SDSU and pharmacy “just seemed like a natural fit,” said Dean Schmiedt, a 1973 pharmacy graduate and family spokesman.
Family roots in Tripp
The Schmiedt family originated in Tripp, but Edgar began his pharmacy career 60 miles east of there in Centerville. In 1946 he bought the store he had been working at and renamed it Schmiedt Drug. Brothers Ruben and Alvin headed west: Ruben to Belle Fourche and Alvin to Deadwood.
It was through Edgar that the family pharmacy line continued, initially through sons Stan ’53 and Morris ’56. Of Stan’s three children, two graduated from State— Dean ’73 and Robert ’78, whose career was in pharmaceutical sales and pharmaceutical industry lobbying. Daughter Barbara married Kevin Wurtz, who in January 1975 started an internship at the Centerville drug store Stan had purchased from his father in 1961.
Kevin Wurtz earned his five-year degree in pharmacy in May 1975, was married in June 1975 and started to work at Pioneer Drug in Elk Point in July 1975. Kevin and Barb Wurtz bought the store in 1977 and in 1989 created Edgar’s Ol’ Fashioned Soda Fountain as a part of Pioneer Drug. That was an inspiration from Edgar’s original soda fountain in Centerville, and he was able to visit the new version a few months before his death Sept. 30, 1989.
Keith Wurtz said his brother was influential in his education choice. He earned his pharmacy degree in 1979 and practiced in Milford, Iowa.
Two of Kevin and Barb Wurtz’s daughters also have chosen pharmacy. Allison Akin ’01/PharmD ’03 works as a clinical program senior with Cigna Healthcare and Health Insurance. Kim Sundling ’12/PharmD ’14 is a behavioral health clinic pharmacist for Florida Blue.
Marrying into a family tradition
By the current century, a new generation of Schmiedts was attending State and their academic interests were broadening.
For example, Chris and Mike Wurtz, sons of Kevin and Barbara, earned degrees in electrical engineering (2005) and computer engineering (2016) while Kelly Schmiedt, daughter of Dean and Karleen, is a 2005 communication studies graduate.
But regardless of the major or the era, there is a family bond with SDSU, said Karleen Schmiedt, a 1973 home ec graduate.
“When you’re in that family, you’re in hook, line and sinker,” and that dates back to the family pharmacy in Centerville. “That’s just the way it was. They depended on each other. They enjoyed being together. They took a lot of pride in their university and their life paths. It is family tradition.”
Dean Schmiedt said, “Our family tree has branched in many directions since 1925, but SDSU remains a link that connects us.”
Swapping professor stories
With a family that can date their South Dakota State connection back 100 years, the list of “favorite professor” stories could go into the next century.
For Stan and Morris Schmiedt, that would be Clark T. Eidsmoe ’29/MS ’32, according to a spring 2000 issue of the SDSU College of Pharmacy magazine. Eidsmoe, who taught at SDSU from 1929 to 1966, would “in about the middle of the semester, tell us we should all be truck drivers instead of pharmacists. That was the truth, too,” Stan told the magazine.
He added, “That was the first semester we were there, and he was a weeder,” meaning Eidsmoe sought to weed out students not suited for pharmacy’s demands.
Brother Morris Schmiedt told the magazine that he was in the first Eidsmoe class to allow use of the slide rule. “Before that you always had to do everything long division. We finally convinced Eidsmoe that the slide rule was just as accurate.”
Dave Graves
