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Presented to
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Cheryl Palmlund, De Smet, executive director of
the Laura
Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society, accepts the 2003 A.H. Pankow
Award from Gov. Mike Rounds on behalf of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
The annual A.H. Pankow Award recognizes a member of the broadcast or print media whose coverage and promotion of the state’s visitor industry is unparalleled.
Laura Ingalls Wilder is unique. Dating back to the late 1800s, she began keeping historical notations of South Dakota in order to preserve personal memories and family stories.
Ingalls Wilder's writing style paints a literary picture of the frontier, which transports the reader back more than a hundred years ago, to a simpler time.
Ingalls Wilder's work is a compilation of life experiences, and embodies the early pioneer spirit of Dakota Territory. Today, her works are printed in more than 40 languages, have been the basis for a long-running, popular television series, other television special programs, and even other books.
It must have been a painstaking process to record pioneer history in notebooks by handwritten chapters. Ingalls Wilder would be gratified to know the sites mentioned in these books have been preserved and reprinted time and time again for readers and fans. These books have brought joy and the discovery of reading to young children throughout the world.
In South Dakota, a society was founded to preserve the writer's heritage, and educate visitors about prairie life.
Ingalls Wilder's family home site in South Dakota is preserved by this society. The prairie land, plants and trees have remained the same throughout the years. An annual summer pageant recreates these stories which are "too good to be lost."
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