Nita Lillian Corl Hipple

July 12 1910 - January 3 1995

Nita Lillian Corl was born in 1910 to a family engaged in the early establishment of telephone service to the Midwest. Her father laid thousands of miles of telephone line and trained local service providers while her mother set up and managed several local phone companies in rural South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa. Nita spent her early childhood in Northwest Iowa but was relocated while still quite young to South Dakota to care for her maternal grandparents; the Kemmerers subsequently died in the 1922 influenza epidemic when Nita was just twelve years old.

She was again relocated this time to Huron, South Dakota where she lived with her maternal aunt helping to raise a niece and two nephews. Following graduation from Huron High Nita worked as a secretary before marrying William Ivory Landsdowne. Together they had a son J. Blair but the Great Depression tore the family apart. Unable to find work locally Landsdowne a stone cutter abandoned his family to search for work in Minnesota. Nita who was to soon secure a job with the U. S. Postal Service remained behind with her son. The family was never reunited.

In 1935 Nita married Charles Hipple a fellow postal employee; several years later they had a daughter Deanna. The couple was married merely nine years when Charley was stricken by a heart attack. Widowed in 1945 Nita a determined single parent raised her two children alone. She had the spirit of a Prairie Pioneer. A 30 year veteran of the Postal Service Nita began her career carrying airmail between the new municipal airfield and the downtown post office. The job required that she carry a gun and she was an excellent markswoman. Donned in snowpants and pilot headgear (scandalous apparel for a women in public in the 1930's) pragmatic Nita often battled 20' snow drifts to get the mail through. While this image creates wonderful family lore most Huron residents remember Nita as the patient friendly presence at the front counter of the Post Office sorting mail dispensing stamps weighing packages and answering questions.

In addition to her career with the Post Office Nita held state offices in the Rebekah's Lodge the Grand Patriarch Militant and the Royal Neighbors. She volunteered at the Senior Center and found pleasure in making craft items for fund raising efforts and gifts. Nita died at the age of 84 at the home of her son in Davenport Iowa on January 3 1995. In reflecting on her life her family including eight grandchildren recalled Nita's fondness for open-faced fruit and vegetable sandwiches her propensity to hum when she was irritated which was our warning to clear the deck or tow the line her collections - of stamps craft materials and canned food stuffs and the unique way in which she wore her watch never having to rotate her wrist when recording time registered mail all those years at the Post Office. Matriarch of the family Nita Lillian Corl Hipple was our heroine. Nita was the paternal grandmother of Patricia Coral Hipple Ph.D. 1996.

2/20/95