Sisters revisit CSC's refurbished dormitory

Ada Riggs Dukat and Ammie Riggs Fisher, now in their early 90s, seemed impressed by the refurbished dormitory and told several stories about their experiences on the campus in the early 1930s.

“It’s unbelievable how the college has changed since I went here,” said Ada, the eldest and most outgoing of the sisters, both of whom took teacher training courses at CSC. “When I came here this dorm had just opened and there were just four major buildings on the campus. Finding your way around wasn’t much of a problem.”

But Ada later confided that she did have some problems, mostly with the Edna Work Hall house mother.

“She picked on us and tiptoed around behind us to make sure we were following the rules,” said Ada. “It got pretty tiresome. They had a lot of tough rules and she tried to make sure we adhered to them.”

Ada later revealed that she and a couple of cohorts got even one time when they put a cat that hung around Edna Work Hall in the house mother’s bed, and scared the wits out of her when she pulled back the covers.

That wasn’t the only high jinks Ada was involved in, she later confided. At least a few times, she sneaked out a window to meet a boyfriend.

Since her room was on one of the upper floors of the three-story building, she said she went out the first floor window of the room belonging to Evelyn Sturgeon Mills, who was from Hay Springs.

“This was our secret for many years,” Ada said. “But when Evelyn and I joined DAR (Daughters of American Revolution) at the same time, darned if she didn’t tell everybody. The dorm hours were pretty ridiculous. I think we had to be in by 9 o’clock on week nights. We (she and her boyfriend) didn’t do anything wrong. We just went to the picture show or maybe to a basketball game. It was a lot more exciting because I’d sneaked out.”

When asked if she was wild, Ada replied, “Oh no, but I did have a lot of fun.”

One of her memories was painting the C on C Hill with a toothbrush.

“I think we got more paint on ourselves than we did on the C,” she recalled.

Ada confided that she did not want to attend Chadron State and become a teacher in the first place. She had her heart set on becoming a nurse. But her mother initially wouldn’t allow her to take nurses’ training. Thus Ada attended CSC for a couple of years to earn a teaching certificate and taught in Sheridan County rural schools for a spell before going to Cambridge, Mass., to become a nurse.

She said she was a surgical in nurse at the Methodist Hospital in Los Angeles in the early 1940s, working three 18-hour shifts a week, then returned to Rushville in 1943 to marry her late husband, Joe Dukat. She served as the director of nursing at the Rushville hospital for a number of years.

“I resigned from that job four times, but they won’t accept my resignations,” she remembered.

Ada related that her education at Chadron State paid off when she went to Massachusetts to begin her nurses’ training. “They accepted all my credits back there except those in chemistry,” she said. “They told me westerners didn’t know chemistry.”

Ironically, after her days as a nurse were over, Ada returned to Chadron State in the late 1950s and early 1960s, renewed her teaching certificate and again taught in rural schools near the Dukats’ ranch in the Sandhills south of Gordon for several years.

Ammie said she had her heart set on being a teacher all along and emphasized that she wasn’t involved in any of the shenanigans that her older sister told about.

“I always wanted to be a teacher and came to college to get an education,” she said as she gave her sister a rather disgusted look as the stories unfolded.

Ammie enrolled at CSC in September 1934 and earned her teaching certificate the following spring. She also retuned in the summers of 1937 and ’38 to take more courses. She said she taught for 6 ½ years altogether, including one year after she was married to her late husband, Albert Fisher, while he was serving in World War II.

Ammie said she became close friends with several of the other young women who also resided in Edna Work Hall. “There were seven of us who kept in touch through the years,” she said. “There are just two of us left. The other one is Winnie Flock of Morrill. We still send each other Christmas cards.”

A third Riggs sister also attended CSC and stayed in what current CSC students frequently call “Edna.” That is Eva Clarke, who is between Ada and Ammie in age and lives in Fullerton, Calif.

“She was the sophisticated one,” Ada said. “She taught out there (California) for many years.” Records in the CSC Registrar’s Office show that Eva attended the college in 1932-33 to earn her one-year teaching certificate and took more courses in the summer of 1934.

Ada and Ammie said they’ve remained interested in what is happening at Chadron State over the years. “This is a wonderful school, but oh how it’s changed,” Ada said. “And this building is beautiful. I’m glad I got to see it again.”

Another highlight was having lunch with Chadron State’s new president, Dr. Janie Park, prior to taking the tour.

The sisters’ visit was courtesy of Barb Marcy of Chadron, who has known them for many years and felt they would enjoy seeing the remodeled facilities. Several who keep tabs on such things say the “new” Edna Work Hall is the classiest residence hall at any of the state-supported educational institutions in the state. It is Chadron State’s honors dormitory, meaning its residents are honors students.

After the tour had ended, the sisters, whose grandfather, John Riggs, was the first sheriff of Sheridan County, were thinking about the future. They noted that if the day comes when they can no longer live alone, they’d rather return to Edna Work Hall than go to a nursing home.

During the visit, Ada quizzed the current house mother, Jill Reading, about the rules the 2005-06 inhabitants of Edna Work Hall must follow. After hearing Ada’s stories, Reading said today’s regulations aren’t nearly as strict. She also noted that no one has put a cat in her bed.