Kristan K. Steffen, researcher and author.

As a school teacher, Laura McCutchen is not only a legend among teachers and students of her own time, but also serves as an archtype. People who had the pleasure of being taught by her describe her as, "one of the best teachers I ever had," "an A #1 teacher," and , "a wonderful person." Linda Wendt, class of 1960, said, "Just knowing her was an education." Katherine Wallace, class of 1924 , said, "She didn't just teach a course, she went over and beyond her duties to make you learn. She kept you right on your toes." Kenny Umenthum, class of 1932, recalls Mrs. McCutchen`s telling a classmate, "You come to this class, and if you can`t learn anything, you can sit there and absorb it like a sponge." At Belle Fourche High School, she often taught three generations of the same family. Laura was an avid journaler. Due to the efforts of Fred Lovell, the diaries Laura kept from 1931 and on have been preserved. The amount of journaling she did before this is unknown. From her diaries, one can conclude that she had two great loves in life: teaching and her family.

Laura (Rhoades) McCutchen was born on October 2nd, 1884, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Harvey S. Rhoades and Mary Hall. She attended grade school and high school at Omaha and received her B.A. degree from the University of Nebraska in 1908. She then attended Columbia University in New York for one term and taught school at Freemont, Nebraska from 1908 to 1910. Laura then came to the Belle Fourche area with her parents in 1910. The family homesteaded in the Whispering Pines area, about six miles southwest of Belle Fourche. She taught in the Belle Fourche schools from 1910 to 1912. She was married on June 19, 1912 to Dan McCutchen, a well-known attorney of Western South Dakota. Dan was born on September 29th, 1883 in Ashland, Nebrasksa to Robert G. McCutchen of Kingston, South Carolina and Ann Mahaney of London, England. On April 5, 1913, almost a year into their marriage, their first and only son, Rhoades McCutchen, was born. Mrs. McCutchen resumed her teaching duties in 1914 and taught through the spring of 1935, when she was forced to retire once again, due to a ruling that prevented the hiring of married womem instructors. During the summer of 1946, the ruling was lifted, and Mrs. McCutchen was contacted, almost immediately, and asked to return to the faculty. She continued teaching up until the day she died.

One of Laura`s favorite pastimes was traveling. While she and Dan sometimes did vacation together, Laura often traveled alone in the summers while she wasn`t teaching. By the time she died, she had been through every state in the nation, to Europe four times, and around the world. She related the things she learned from her extensive travels to her English, Spanish, Latin and French students, which made her a very reliable instructor. A former student, Katherine Wallace, recalls, "You got a good general education if you took a course from her."

Because of all the traveling that Mrs. McCutchen did, she knew all about the different cultures and customs from various parts of the world. The way that she incorporated her findings in the classroom really kept things interesting. Katherine Wallace remembers Mrs. McCutchen telling of the Passion Play at Oberammergau, which takes place only once every ten years. Mrs. McCutchen had visited it and told her students so much about it that Katherine decided that she was going to visit it in ten years. Well, she had to wait longer than ten years, but Mrs. Wallace did get her chance to go see it. She had the vacation of her life in Europe; the village of Oberammergau in Southern Germany was the highlight of the trip. Among many other visual aids from around the world, Linda Wendt remembers Mrs. McCutchen bringing a Roman helmet, which was originally a souvenir for Rhoades, to show to the class. Kenny Umenthum remembers a South American newspaper that Mrs. McCutchen always had in Spanish class for her students to read.

Everyone remembers Mrs. McCutchen's sweet and gentle grandmotherly personality, but right along with this, anyone who knew her well remembers how feisty she could be. Many younger students were afraid to take classes from Mrs. McCutchen. Katherine Wallace remembers hearing all kinds of stories about her and how tough she was. "And I was so scared," she said, "I was shaking in my boots." Linda Wendt stated, ". . . she was very fierce, I mean, you just did never think of disrespecting her." Evelyn O`Conner, a former co-worker of Mrs. McCutchen's, said, "...she knew what she wanted and she usually got it." She had high expectations of her students and they all knew it. Often times in her diaries she would comment on how the students didn't do as well as they should have on the tests or how the students were too rowdy and didn't pay attention. Linda Wendt recalls a time when a girl in class had cigarettes in her purse. "Mrs. McCutchen saw this, and boy, did that girl get a sermon!" According to Mrs. McCutchen, the girl was far too young to be smoking. In her later years, Mrs. McCutchen wore hearing aids. When the class directly above hers moved their chairs around, causing terrible screeching noises, Mrs. McCutchen would then scream, "Cacophony!"

Mrs. McCutchen didn't stand for much of anything that annoyed her. It really made her angry if the city didn't clean out the alley next to her house so she could back out her car the way she liked. Another thing that frustrated her were the faculty and school board meetings. A typical comment from a journal reads, "Faculty meeting was long and tiresome about grades and tests!" And she just could not understand why the government would not let married women teach during the Depression. Mrs. McCutchen had to quit teaching from 1935 to 1946. This made her very angry. She just could not believe the government would do something "so stupid" as to ban women because "men needed the jobs."

Mrs. McCutchen had different methods for making her students learn. She always kept them on their toes. Katherine Wallace remembers how Mrs. McCutchen would come to class each day and ask a student a question about either something they were supposed to know from her lessons, or about life in general. Mrs. Wallace remembers one instance especially when Mrs. McCutchen asked what Good Friday was. A boy who sat next to Katherine looked to her for the answer. She whispered, "That's the day you're supposed to plant your cabbages." He blurted it right out, and this certainly wasn`t the answer that Mrs. McCutchen wanted from him, "so he sure got a good laughing at." Linda Wendt remembers her pulling the big garbage can out into the middle of the room in English IV. The garbage can became the caldron that the witches were sitting around in the play Macbeth.

There was a lot of memorizing to do in Mrs. McCutchen's classes. One thing that all of her students remember is her literary alphabet. There was a famous quotation for every letter of the alphabet, and each student had to eventually memorize them all. Now, even four decades later, most of her students still recall some of the more memorable quotes. What she did, she did well. She knew very well about everything she taught her students. Freeman Mortimer, Class of `27, recalls being "on her list," as he was the son of Dan McCutchen`s opponent in local elections. "I got F`s from Mrs. McCutchen every six weeks, and I still managed to learn something from her classes." He remembers coming home and finding his son, Jim, in quite a bit of trouble with his mother. Mr. Mortimer asked Jim, Class of `56, why he was in so much trouble. His son showed him the Report Card with an `F` from Mrs. McCutchen. Freeman took it, looked it over carefully, and said, "Well, she makes her `F`s the same way she did when I had her!"

Students did a lot of eating in Mrs. McCutchen's classes. Numerous references in the diaries reveal that eating was one of her favorite things. Mrs. McCutchen frequently dined out and her diaries always contained evaluations of the food: "Dan took us to Spearfish for a lunch at Cooper's but it wasn't very good," ". . . ate a terrible supper at Spearfish Hotel," "Dan & I went to club at Overpecks and had delicious Swiss steak." Her students knew how to please her sweet tooth. Whenever their mothers baked something good, they would take some to Mrs. McCutchen. While the students knew what she liked, they had to be careful not to be accused of "buttering her up." Mrs. McCutchen would order different foods from all around the world. Linda Wendt remembers having hollyhock tea, candy made out of cactus, and special chocolates from around the world in class. She also remembers a Roman banquet that the Latin classes took part in one evening. The Latin I students wore slave tunics and served a meal to the Latin II students. The main dish was peacock, an authentic Roman food. The peacock that the class ate came from the old Hill City Zoo. A young man in the class knew the man who ran the zoo. Since the peacock was getting old, the class got to eat it. Many of her students recalled the trip down to the old Western Drug for a frappe when they got a good grade on a test, compliments of Mrs. McCutchen. None of her students remember getting the honor very often, but they all remember the ritual.

As Rhoades grew older, the family had their share of problems. With the constant push from his mother to become a scholar, Rhoades went the other direction. He wanted nothing to do with the scholarly life. Despite this, Laura was always extremely proud of her son. She attended most all of his football and basketball games, and was an avid Bronc fan. Even when Rhoades was grown and living a long distance away, he and his mother kept in touch; the diaries tell of countless letters she frequently wrote and received in correspondence to Rhoades.

Rhoades was one of the few students in high-school who had his own car. For his eighteenth birthday, his parents bought him a brand new Ford Model-A convertible car, which was probably a great accessory to his reputation as "quite the Romeo". The car did get him into trouble at least once, though, when Laura found a ring of bologna and a butcher knife in the car. She was very angry.

Laura often used her diaries as an outlet for her anger. In the diaries, there are many pages where pieces of information have been cut out. It looks as though she took a razor blade and removed information from pages that included anything she didn`t want to remember. There is evidence that a lot of this probably has to do with her son, who could be quite the trouble maker. For instance, there is a place in one of Laura`s diaries where she is writing about when she and Dan had gone on a trip, and left Rhoades at home. Laura wrote about how the carpet was ruined and the house was all wrecked, and then there is nothing. Laura snipped out the rest of the story before she died.

Rhoades worked as a welder, an airplane aviator, and was also quite the mechanic. As Rhoades entered adulthood, he joined the U.S Army, and served in World War II. At one point, Linda Wendt said that he was stationed overseas and wasn`t allowed to tell anyone where he was at. His letters were censored, but Rhoades had learned some Roman geography from what his mother taught him. He wrote letters that mentioned the mountains and things that were near him. According to Linda Wendt, Laura was, ``just tickled`` that she knew exactly where he was stationed. Laura would have done anything for him. She sent him money often, just as she sent him anything else he may have needed, or wanted. Linda Wendt remembers reading in one of the diaries where it mentioned a time when Rhoades had written to his mother while he was away in the Army, requesting that she send him a pistol. At one point, Laura wrote about a rather serious problem Rhoades ran into, Laura`s diary tells of the incident: "A sad V-mail from Rhoades tells of his unjust cruel court-martial for killing 2 Germans. My God, they ought to be killed. This was their war. He should be honored." Apparently, after Laura contacted many prestigious politicians about Rhoades' problem, his case was eventually dismissed.

Rhoades has three marriages and two divorces on record at the Butte County Court House. Chronologically these are: Mary Edith (Meredith) Stanley, Kathryn, and Betty Rozell. Rhoades had one daughter, Michele, whose mother was Kathryn. Michele was born on February 22, 1942. Lem Overpeck, who was the son of Dan McCutchen`s business partner, represented Rhoades in his divorce cases.

It is known that when Rhoades came back for his mother`s funeral, people saw an insensitive side of him. Linda Wendt remembers the only time she ever saw him--at his mother`s funeral. She said that he came in with two other men, one on each side. He was huge and took up the whole doorway. When he went home to clear out Laura`s things he didn`t take much time. He pulled a dump truck up to the back of the house where there was bedroom window, and just threw everything out the window and into the dump truck to transport Mrs. McCutchen`s personal belongings, along with her diaries, to the dump. A friend of Linda Wendt`s father mentioned this, and Linda ended up saving the precious diaries from the dump. Katherine Wallace remembers that there was a time when people from the community who knew Mrs. McCutchen could go and pick out one of her old books to take home. Mrs. Wallace said that when Rhoades came back, "he had his bottle of beer, or hootch of some kind, and he didn`t give a darn about all these precious things that his mother had. He just backed the truck up there and loaded it up and took it out to the dump." There are many rumors about why Rhoades was in such a hurry, but the entire story remains a mystery.

The McCutchen family was one of the most prominent in Belle Fourche. President Calvin Coolidge stayed in their home in 1927 when he was in the area to see the Black Hills Roundup. Because of Dan`s occupation and political involvement, the couple was often required to attend different business dinners and parties. Although much of the couple`s socializing revolved around business, they did take time for personal entertainment. They often played cards with Tyler Overpeck, Dan`s business partner, and his family, along with other friends. The group took turns hosting bridge parties. Every now and then they went for drives in one of their cars, often times it was to test out a new car. They would go out to eat at different restaurants almost every night. It was very seldom that they cooked and ate at home. As a family, they would go to the movie theater in Belle Fourche or Spearfish for entertainment. Dan and Laura spent a lot of time together as a couple. Despite Dan`s frequent trips to notorious Deadwood and rumors of heavy drinking, they seemed to get along well in their somewhat unusual marriage.

On Christmas Eve in 1943, Dan passed away. On the death certificate, it says he died from complications of a heart attack that he suffered from the previous year. According to Linda Wendt, he wasn't in very good health in his later years. She remembers reading in the diaries where Laura mentions Dan visiting the doctor and being diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver, among other health complications. After Dan`s death, Laura was extremely lonely for a long time. She thought about her husband very often and she was still very much in love with him. It took a long time before Laura could move on, but she never did stop loving him. In Laura's later years, she spent a lot of time with a gentleman friend, Ollie Robinson. They often went to church together, out to eat, or for a drive.

As Laura grew older, she grew more particular and very much more frugal. She used to go down and get the unused wood scraps from the wood shop after school every single day so she could take them home and burn them to heat her house. She would even go outside and gather up twigs to burn. She didn't believe in wasting anything. She would get the old movie lists from the Belle Theater and make lines on the back of them. She made the lines very big so she wouldn`t have to struggle to read her students` writing. Her students used the lined backs of these movie lists to write their tests on.

Laura touched the lives of many, many people. She devoted a big part of her life to her career, which she never took lightly, but she always made time to travel and entertain herself with the things she loved. She reached out to students of every learning caliber, and was an incredible asset to the education of every student she taught. She was a loving wife, mother and friend. She had many friends in town and she also kept in touch with many people she met throughout the world. She loved receiving letters from the people she couldn`t always see. She always stayed in touch with Rhoades. Laura McCutchen lived a long and very full life. She died on May1, 1961. Cause of death was not announced at the time of her death, but her death certificate reads that "carcinoma of jenjunum" was the cause. She was seventy-six years old and still hard at work. Although she is gone, her legacy lives on in the lives of all her students.

Formerly the home of the McCutchen family, the Candlelight Bed and Breakfast stands on Fifth Avenue in Belle Fourche, S.D.