Clark S. Thomas was born on December 8, 1917, in rural Springfield, South Dakota. He attended South Dakota State College from 1937 to 1941, earning a degree in agriculture. From 1941 to 1945, he served in the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, stationed at military posts in Texas and California, and overseas in Guatemala and India. Following his military service, he farmed near Springfield, South Dakota, until his retirement in 1980.
Verl Thomson was a pioneering South Dakota broadcaster. Born on April 26, 1906, he began his career at Sioux Falls' first broadcast radio station in 1924. He later served as an announcer and program director for KSOO and KELO, and worked as an announcer for NBC in Chicago. In 1948, he established radio station KSID, which he operated until its sale in 1966. From 1962 to 1987, Thomson served as executive director of the South Dakota Broadcasters Association. He passed away on July 7, 1989.
Valerian Three Irons is a Native American educator, oral historian, and advocate for Indigenous language preservation. He served as a professor of American Indian Studies and Associate for Diversity at South Dakota State University from 1997 to 2011. After leaving SDSU, Three Irons joined the faculty of Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College in New Town, North Dakota, where he has been actively involved in teaching Native American Studies and supporting Mandan language revitalization efforts. In 2018, he received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to create a publicly accessible archive of Mandan language resources. Throughout his career, he has contributed to tribal education, cultural preservation, and service-learning initiatives.
TLN Productions, Inc., based in West Palm Beach, Florida, was a television production company active during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries that specialized in travel, outdoor recreation, and destination programming. The company produced and distributed a variety of television segments and series highlighting landscapes, communities, cultural heritage, and tourism opportunities throughout the United States. TLN Productions frequently collaborated with tourism agencies, local communities, and regional organizations to film locations and develop programming designed to promote travel and public interest in particular destinations.
Among the company’s projects was the travel series Discover America, a program that featured locations across the United States and introduced viewers to regional attractions, historic sites, natural landscapes, and recreational activities. Episodes and segments were filmed on location and incorporated interviews, scenic footage, and coverage of local cultural and tourism destinations. The series was created as a travel-promotion program intended to showcase the diversity of American regions and encourage tourism.
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, TLN Productions filmed several segments in South Dakota for inclusion in the Discover America series. Filming documented communities, cultural sites, and recreational destinations across the state, including areas such as Lake Andes, Aberdeen, Fort Randall Casino, and locations associated with the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. The footage captured landscapes, community events, tourism facilities, and regional attractions intended to highlight South Dakota as a travel destination.
The resulting recordings represent the production materials created during the filming of these segments. They document the work of TLN Productions in promoting regional tourism through television programming and provide visual documentation of South Dakota communities and attractions at the time of filming.
Alfred “Al” George Trump Jr. was born April 23, 1907, in Kahoka, Missouri, to Alfred G. Trump Sr. and Elizabeth Bonnett Trump. At age eleven he moved with his family to Chicago, where he graduated from Hyde Park High School in 1924. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Germanics from the University of Chicago in 1929 and later completed the A.B.M.S. degree in 1933 and the A.M.L.S. degree in 1938 at the University of Michigan. Prior to coming to South Dakota, Trump gained broad professional experience in both public and academic libraries, holding positions at the Chicago Public Library, the University of Chicago Library, the University of Michigan Library, the Michigan State Law Library, and Virginia Junior College in Minnesota. During World War II, he served in the United States Navy from 1944 to 1946 as a lieutenant, performing intelligence work in the continental United States and Hawaii.
Trump joined South Dakota State College in 1948 as a librarian and was at that time the sole faculty member assigned to the library. The collection comprised approximately 90,000 volumes housed on the second floor of Lincoln Library, serving a student body of about 900. Appointed director of libraries in 1959, he oversaw a period of substantial expansion that paralleled the institution’s growth and the introduction of doctoral programs beginning in 1954. By his retirement in 1972, the library system held roughly 270,000 volumes and 3,000 journal subscriptions in Lincoln Library, with additional specialized collections located across campus and at nursing facilities in St. Paul, Minnesota. Trump attributed the rapid growth of holdings, particularly in scientific journals, to expanding research needs and played a central role in developing one of the strongest research library collections in the state. After retirement, he continued to serve as archivist emeritus and assisted with planning and logistics for the 1977 relocation of collections to the Hilton M. Briggs Library.
Active in professional service, Trump served as president of the South Dakota Library Association (1958–1959), represented the state in the Mountain Plains Library Association, and served on the governing council of the American Library Association. In Brookings, he participated in St. Paul’s Episcopal Church and university and community organizations for retired faculty and teachers. On August 22, 1935, he married Anne Harris Arnold, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Oberlin College who earned a master’s degree in history from Case Western Reserve University and worked in academic and state libraries before serving as assistant librarian at the Brookings Public Library from 1960 to 1986. Together they had four children: Michael, Peter, Jeane Gautier, and Andrew. Alfred G. Trump Jr. died November 26, 1994; Anne Arnold Trump died January 11, 2004.
Andrew Benjamin Trump was born on November 28, 1950, in Brookings, South Dakota, to Alfred G. Trump Jr. and Anne A. Trump. His father served as librarian and archivist at South Dakota State University, and his mother worked at the Brookings Public Library. He later resided in Fargo, North Dakota, and passed away unexpectedly in Sioux Falls on October 27, 2021, at the age of 70.
TV Productions Inc. is a locally owned video production company based in Brookings, South Dakota. The company provides full-service media production, including filming, editing, and post-production services, primarily for clients in the Brookings area. It has been involved in the creation of a wide range of audiovisual content, including promotional materials, event documentation, and institutional recordings, particularly for South Dakota State University. The company is owned and operated by Jay Vanduch, who has also served in operations at the SDSU Performing Arts Center. TV Productions Inc. has contributed to the preservation and dissemination of local and institutional history through its media work.
Loto Rollinstahl Underwood was born on August 22, 1888, in Bryant, South Dakota, to John E. and Mary M. (McLees) Underwood. She was one of four daughters—Ethel, Genevieve, Loto, and Beatrice—the latter three of whom attended South Dakota State College. Her parents emigrated from Canada in 1882 and settled in Garfield Township, Hamlin County, South Dakota, where John Underwood worked in the hardware business. While attending South Dakota State College, Loto was a member of the Athenian Society. She married Orland Emilie White on July 28, 1913. Loto Underwood White died on April 21, 1968, in a nursing home in Charlottesville, Virginia.