Historic church in Kimball stands as sanctuary for rural life past and present

Nov. 3—KIMBALL, S.D. — Wayne Woodraska and Doris Ann Chmela pored over thousands of items on a visit to the artifact repository of the Brule County Historical Society.

There are troves of black and white photographs, century-old property plat maps and vintage wedding dresses and religious vestments. There is a small facsimile of a one-room country schoolhouse as well as a pair of preserved locusts, the kind that decimated entire fields throughout the Midwest in the 1930s.

There are also a few odds and ends.

"Where these came from?" Woodraska pondered as he gestured toward a pair of mysterious pointed wooden objects in a corner. "We have no idea what they are or where they're from."

With such a sizable and eclectic collection, there are bound to be a few unknowns among the assemblage. But volunteers with the historic society like Woodraska and Chmela do their best to organize and catalog the items so that visitors who stop by can reach back in time to visit the past or even research their family history among its aging documents.

The repository is actually the basement of the Holy Trinity Church just off Interstate 90 in Kimball. Also known as the Bendon Church after the small community it once served, it was moved to its present location from its original home about 15 miles southwest in Richland Township in 1982, having served Catholic parishioners there since it was built in 1893.

It continues to serve the public, only now it does so as the home base for the Brule County Historical Society.

"This is the flagship for the Brule County Historical Society," Woodraska, who serves as president of the organization, told the Mitchell Republic during a recent tour of the building. "Brule County had at one time 22 churches of different denominations. Those pioneers, they had a faith, and they wanted to share it with each other."

Now after more than 40 years at its new location, the society is working to raise funds for a badly-needed exterior paint job for the structure. The original wooden siding was replaced with white aluminum siding over the years, but South Dakota weather has gradually eroded the color from the surface. Now apparently out of warranty and with the society unable to track down even the company that did the siding work, they are looking at having the church professionally painted.

It was difficult finding painters to do the job, and the work won't come cheap. The society is trying to secure grants and donations from the public to help offset some of the estimated $28,000 price tag. Ideally, work would begin sometime in the spring of 2024.

While nearly all of the interior is as it was when it was a functioning church in Bendon, it's not the first restoration the society has done at the church. The original windows have been replaced with modern equivalents, keeping insects and dust from settling in the sanctuary. The furniture has been refinished, the walls and statues cleaned and floors sanded and sealed. There is a new cross atop the steeple and new red cedar shingles on the roof.

It's a lot of work for the handful of volunteers, but it's important work, said Chmela, who serves as secretary for the society. The church holds not only most of the collection of the Brule County Historical Society, but also a lifetime of memories for those who once attended services at the church before it was moved.

Both Chmela and Woodraska can recall attending the church when it was still an active Catholic church before services there ceased in 1977. The small but cozy sanctuary could hold about 120 people in its heyday, and it hosted everything from mass to weddings and funerals.

Luckily, the church suffered little damage or deterioration in the five years from when it closed to when it was moved to Kimball. The statues all look pristine and the ceiling painting at the front of the church, done by local artist Alois Krepela before his death in 1913 and possibly completed later by his son, is still clear and sharp to anyone who glances upward.

"Nothing has happened to even the stations of the cross or the statues. I think they are just like they were. The pedal pump organ still works," Chmela said.

Woodraska's mother used to sing in the choir, and Chmela recalls her mother-in-law telling her if you sat in one of the back rows, confessions being heard at the back of the sanctuary were not always as private as intended.

"If you sat in the back, you could hear it all," Chmela chuckled.

Now a part of a complex that includes the South Dakota Tractor Museum next door, the church hosts visitors interested in Brule County history, researching family trees or simply checking out a historic attraction.

The attention goes beyond Brule County. Chmela noted that some neighboring counties don't have an active historical society of their own, so the Bendon Church serves as a gathering place for items not necessarily related to the specific history of the church.

"Aurora County has no historical society, and neither does Buffalo County, so we have some of their stuff. We need to go through and clean it up, but there's so much of it and so few of us," Chmela said.

Chmela said there are around a half-dozen volunteers active in curating the society's collection and spearheading the fundraising efforts. That can make progress on projects slow, but in general the public has been gracious with donations of both money and items. She and Woodraska credit Lucille Houda, a local resident who over her lifetime welcomed artifacts into the society from most anyone who would give them to her, for giving the society its foundation.

She was also an important part of getting the church listed on the National Registry of Historic Places in 1983.

"She was very instrumental in getting this church moved here and getting it on the historic registry. Without her tenacity and stubbornness, it would never have happened," Woodraska said.

The current caretakers of the church intend to continue Houda's work as best they can. It is hoped the new paint job will help bring the church back to some of its former gleaming-white glory, and there has been talk of holding an occasional mass at the church for those who wish to experience a service at a historic country church.

In the meantime, there is a collection to organize and catalog. There are insurance and electricity bills to pay and grounds to keep up. And, of course, fundraising to do. It's all a part of keeping area history alive well into the 21st century.

"We want to preserve it. We love this church. My dad went to this church. I went as a kid, and my husband and I took our kids," Chmela said. "Anything will help us, because $28,000 is nothing to sneeze at."

Donations for the painting project can be sent to the Brule County Historical Society, P.O. Box 402, Kimball, S.D., 57355.