Editor's note: Every few weeks, Argus Leader Media writers and photographers are going into different neighborhoods and spending the day talking to those who live there, to share their stories and what characterizes their community. Recently we were in the area around Spellerberg Park.
To read other stories in this series, click here.
Not many Sioux Falls people are out and about at 7:30 a.m., but Mel and Carol Feuerstein like to sit on their front porch with a cup of coffee and the newspaper.
"It's great to sit here," Carol said. "People stop to chat for a minute."
The Feuersteins have lived at their home on Hawthorne Avenue for 43 years. They call their neighborhood the "boat" because of the way their street and Park Avenue connect in an oblong shape between 23rd and 25th streets. In the middle of the boat is the "catwalk," a sidewalk Mel said was created so neighborhood kids could easily cut through the oval to the old Spellerberg pool.
"I think we live in one of the best neighborhoods in Sioux Falls," Mel said.
The couple graduated together from Augustana College in 1963. Carol taught fourth grade in Brandon for 31 years and then spent three years teaching fifth-graders in Sioux Falls. Mel worked as the assistant business manager for the Sioux Falls School District before leaving to start his own business.
He started a Quick Check grocery store, one of the first convenience stores in town.
The couple later sold the stores, and during the Reagan era, Mel started working as the commodity supervisor for the state of South Dakota. He helped distribute surplus USDA foods to schools, churches and the community.
"We emptied the warehouses," he said, adding that he helped bring food to 330 towns across the state.
Today, the Feuersteins know everybody in their neighborhood. They've hosted an annual block party for the past seven years, drawing a crowd of 61 neighbors this year.
"There are two requirements to live in this neighborhood," Mel said. "One, attend the block party, and two, put up luminarias at Christmas."
Every house in the "boat" neighborhood puts up luminarias, brown paper sacks lit from the inside with candles, the Sunday before Christmas Eve each year. The tradition began with a pastor at First Baptist Church decades ago. They used to stretch from Willow Avenue to Jefferson Elementary School. Now the couple teaches new neighbors how to make them.
"If someone can't do it, other neighbors fill in and make sure they're lit," Mel said.
Gladys Kunze and Judy Niklason come to the Spellerberg neighborhood to exercise and socialize.
"We work out, and then we do puzzles," Niklason said.
They worked on a 1,000-piece puzzle of a basket of fruit at Welcyon, a gym geared to "fitness after 50" on a recent morning.
"It is really a self-workout," Niklason said of the gym. "You're not competing.."
The daily routine usually involves a workout with a trainer followed by about an hour of puzzles as a cool down.
Kunze had opened the fruit puzzle the day before, and when she came back Wednesday morning, the entire border was put together. People piece together bits and pieces throughout the day, she said.
Shauna Batcheller stepped left to right and back again, pushing one son, then another, on the swings at Spellerberg park.
Winston, 4, and Harrison, 2, flew back and forth, giggling. Every few minutes, one of them would look up and say, "Higher, Mommy!"
Shauna and her husband, Joe, moved from Colorado to Sioux Falls last month when Joe began working as the new leader of Downtown Sioux Falls, Inc.
The couple grew up in Sioux Falls. She is excited to be close to parks and the Park Ridge mall, and is looking forward to the new indoor aquatic center so the boys can swim year-round, she said.
"We missed the bike trails while we were gone," Shauna added.
In their first month back in Sioux Falls, new neighbors on Oak Street have welcomed the Batchellers, Shauna said.
"All the neighbors have kids," Batcheller said. "It's been really an easy transition."
Lisa Abrahamson "livened up" the Spellerberg park neighborhood when she moved in her family and her day care service in 2001.
She wasn't sure the neighbors liked her at first.
Abrahamson hasn't had the day care service for eight years now, but her home isn't any less lively. Ten minutes chatting on her porch, and three different cars pulled up driven by two sons and her husband.
Her husband works at United Rental, and Abrahamson said she's put in her time raising her three sons, now 21, 20 and 18.
Mid-morning Wednesday, Abrahamson sat on her porch with her future daughter-in-law, Amber.
Abrahamson likes her neighborhood because it's quiet and safe.
"We're not ritzy people," she said. "We're middle class."
Abrahamson grew up on Willow Avenue and now lives on Park Avenue near 22nd Street.
"I don't leave this neighborhood," Abrahamson said. "I've got to live here because I love the trees."
Since 2006, Dawn Janis has welcomed foster children into her home. For the first six years, that home was in Rapid City, nearer to the Indian reservations from which many of the children came.
"I had three children of my own, but I just felt I had more to offer," Janis said Wednesday from an easy chair in her home near the Park Ridge shopping center.
The Oglala Lakota woman moved to Sioux Falls in 2012 to be closer to the intensive medical needs of one of the two children she's had since their infancy, an 8-year-old girl who sustained a brain injuries as a baby.
"They didn't have what she needed in Rapid City," Janis said.
Neighbors and family members visit often. She also helps with short-term foster children.
"It's kind of a sad thing sometimes," Janis said. "You get attached to them, then they go back to their families."
Janis' extension of affection serves an additional purpose in South Dakota, a state where 80 to 90 percent of Native American foster children are placed in white homes, despite a federal law called the Indian Child Welfare Act that requires such non-Indian foster placements of tribal children to be considered as a last result.
A home with Janis is a home with a connection to the cultural heritage the law was meant to preserve.
"I think it makes the families feel more comfortable knowing the kids are here," Janis said. "Being Native American, I'd like to see more Native American families fostering native children."
Wayne Anderson's Spellerberg home, at one of the busiest intersections in the neighborhood, stands out.
Anderson's house has a garage that faces Western Avenue, a barn-like storage shed in the corner of the fenced-in corner lot addressed on 18th street, and a collection of old Dodge vehicles in two separate driveways.
The home has earned the ire of the city, which took him to court for nuisance violations in May – a sore spot for the colorful 72-year-old, a tinkerer who sells coveralls wholesale to Hutterite colony members in what he describes as "semi-retirement."
The home was built in the 1930s by a carnival maven known as Snowball Stuck, Anderson said. When the Andersons moved in, the warehouse in the lot's corner still had a few bingo cards and tokens inside.
"There was an "S" in the chimney for Snowball when my dad bought the place," he said Wednesday afternoon as he leaned on the roof of a sedan and waited for some customers.
The next owners were entertainers, he said, a married couple with a vaudeville-style act that performed as "Null and Void." The "Null" portion of the act's stage moniker came from the husband's name.
His family brought its own colorful history: Two decades ago, a deer jumped through the windows of the 18th Street garage, slid across the hood of a car and made a mess of the interior.
"That deer kicked the whole place apart," he said, remembering the day his father called him to the house with the incredible tale.
In the shadow of the massive Sanford Children's Hospital, a cozy-looking structure is nestled into the western edge of a lot across West Avenue.
The unassuming Ceili Cottage is for people with late-stage Alzheimer's disease and dementia.
The Center for Active Generations opened the cottage two years ago, using grant money from the United Way. Aside from the sign outside the cottage, the house blends in with the homes facing the castle-like hospital.
Between five and eight participants in the daytime program arrive at around 6:45 a.m. from their homes, where most stay with their adult children.
"The caregivers need a break," said Molly Keegan, program director for adult day services for Active Generations. "Most of them are at work during the day."
The walls of the dining room are adorned with pictures of the participants and their family members, part of a décor meant to separate Ceili Cottage from the busier, more bustling day programs at Active Generations.
"We really wanted to create an atmosphere that feels like something familiar." Keegan said Wednesday, describing the venture as a group gathered around the dining room table sang along to the old-timey tune "Daisy Bell."
Sing-alongs are part of the daily routine, said Shantell Bleeker, an Active Generations employee who moved from the main campus to Ceili about a month ago. The routines also includes newspaper readings, rundowns of the day in history and a host of whimsical activities.
"Their favorite is balloon volleyball," Bleeker said.
Judy Hartman's beauty shop looks like a home, though it hasn't been one for her since the 1990s. She takes customers by appointment, but she still gets the occasional door-to-door solicitor during business hours.
Salon LaRee's roots in Spellerberg go back 45 years, and a community connection brought Hartman in.
She was drawn there by a former neighbor, who put her in touch with the previous owner of the salon and electrolysis shop.
Hartman decided to switch careers and learn hairstyling – her aunt's profession through the 1960s and 70s - after a decade as a respiratory therapist. As Hartman was finishing school for hairstyling, she connected with the salon's owner, who was retiring.
She showed up for the job and found out that it was set up not only for styling, but for electrolysis, a permanent hair removal service.
"I had to go right back to school for electrolysis," Hartman said.
She was first certified in the electrolysis in 1984, the year she started at the salon. Today, it's still decorated with some of her aunt's old ceramic "pot heads," which feature fashionable faces of women from far-gone eras. There are a few dozen other salon-related ceramics on the shelf at the bottom of the stairs, and the sink and counter top on the other side still stand out in bright pink.
"We've remodeled a few times, but I still like the pink counter," she said.
Becky Roach is pretty sure her house is the only one in Spellerberg with a race car out front.
The souped-up Buick Regal is normally in a garage in Harrisburg, but Charlie Koepp, who built the car, has a different vehicle in that spot right now.
"Usually, we don't keep it here," Koepp said.
Koepp and his children, Roach's grandsons and granddaughter, have been staying with Roach since mid-winter, after an ankle injury from a dirt bike race took him out of the work force. Sarah Roach, Becky's daughter, rounds out the household.
"They needed some help for a while, and I don't mind," Becky Roach said. "I've got a little house, but we manage."
The black racer, emblazoned with its bright lime green lettering and pock-marked with track dents, is a more common sight at Huset's speedway in Brandon or I-90 speedway in Hartford. Koepp's second season in the car he built has gone well enough so far, he says. The car cruises through straightaways at about 75 miles an hour.
"There's a rush to it," he said. "Once you start, you can't stop. It's also about knowing that you're out there in something you've built yourself."
Mostly himself, anyway. His 11-year-old son Craven Roach was proud to announce that he'd helped work on the car, and 16-month-old Jace gets in on the action, as well.
"He takes the wrench and bangs on stuff," Craven Roach said.
As long as the Park Ridge Galleria Mall has existed, the shoe store has been there.
Park Ridge Shoes & Shoe Repair went into business in 1955, when the mall was built.
The mall has changed over the years, but the shop has been fixing shoes, boots, handbags, baseball gloves and whatever else can be repaired with a needle and thread the whole time.
Missy Ruth worked one recent afternoon as a rush of after-work customers came in to pick up and drop off shoes that needed fixing.
Her mother Sandy Ruth has owned the store for the past 22 years. They have seven full-time employees and see many customers whose doctors refer them for their orthopedic shoe products.
Stepping from the store proper to the back room is a little like walking through a time machine. The main room is full of modern shoes, sandals and pedi-products for sale – Park Ridge can't rely solely on repairs to stay in business – while the backrooms are factories of heavy, almost ancient-looking machinery.
"Sure, a lot of people throw their shoes away and get new ones. But some people have a hard time finding shoes that fit, so when they find a pair that fits them well, they want to keep them as long as they can," Missy Ruth says. "We do a lot of soles and heels, we dye shoes, refinish shoes…Sometimes people bring in (family heirlooms) they don't want to lose. We kind of see it all."
Missy Ruth learned the trade from her mom, who began sewing at Park Ridge 30 years ago, after a job at Raven Industries.
Now Missy Ruth is preparing to take over when Sandy retires later this year.
"Mom trained me," she says. "It wasn't too hard – you just sort of pick it up. If you're good with your hands it's a fun, easy job."
While the world has changed above them, they've remained content in the Park Ridge basement.
"We had to cut our machines apart and solder them back together to get down here, so we're in no hurry to move," Missy says. "This has been our location forever."
It's 90 degrees, sunny and humid on Wednesday evening, but the Warriors junior football team is in full pads, ready for practice in the flat southeast corner of Spellberg Park.
They're a team of fifth and sixth graders who play their games at the new South Dakota Junior Football fields near the Pentagon, but this small slice of grass at the bottom of the big hill is their designated practice space.
Gary Stewart is a parent and assistant coach on the team. He was a player on the 1984 Lincoln High team that seemed destined for a state championship before getting upset by O'Gorman in the playoffs. He stood with a gaggle of other parents Wednesday – some of whom were in lawn chairs, some occupied with a book or their smartphone.
"If these kids are going to be solid football players, this is where it's going to start," said Stewart, whose son, Riley, plays on the team. "There are kids here whose future is really focused on staying with this and working hard to get better so one day it'll pay off."
Still, the team is young, and most of them are still learning to run while wearing pads.
Then again, there's talent that stands out. Chancellor is a running back – he's fast and shifty. Tyler is one of the team's smallest players, but an aggressive tackler and hard hitter. And Stewart praises them for their dogged hard work in the heat. They practice four nights a week for two hours, with an optional fifth practice on Friday. Running up that deathly hill is part of their conditioning.
As a former player himself, Stewart is mindful of the movement among some parents to discourage their kids from playing football for safety concerns. He praises the "Heads Up" program for coaches.
"It was a really eye-opening experience – they didn't teach us this stuff when we were in high school," Stewart said of the training program.
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