Three to receive Chadron State alumni awards

The Distinguished Alumni honors will be presented to Dave Bellis, the band director at Worland High School in Wyoming, and Dan Knight, a businessman who lives in Texas. The Outstanding Young Alumni Award will go to Jackie Klerk Waldie, an elementary teacher in Rapid City.

A 1998 graduate of Chadron State, Waldie was selected the Wal-Mart Teacher of the Year for South Dakota in 2002 when she was just 27 years old. She is a fifth grade teacher at the Rapid Valley Elementary School and also serves as the school’s technology coordinator.

While attending CSC, Waldie became proficient on both PC and Macintosh computers. Her principal recognized those skills when she joined the Rapid Valley faculty eight years ago and sent her to several training sessions.

With that background, Waldie developed what she calls “a technology assisted classroom.” The classroom has a computer for every two students.

When she received the Teacher of the Year Award she told the Rapid City Journal that she seldom supplies answers for her students’ work, requiring them to “click around and find what they need.” She said the process builds their confidence.

Through the technology, she is able to modify the assignments for special-needs students as well as for the gifted

With the $5,500 in funds that Rapid Valley School received from Wal-Mart because of Waldie’s awards, a digital projection system was purchased. As the technology coordinator, she conducts training for the other staff member to support the No Child Left Behind requirements. She also organizes a monthly “virtual field trip” via satellite for all the Rapid Valley students, taking them to interesting and educational places around the world.

Since fifth graders study U, S. history, she also arranges for her students to participate in a live call-in program that originates at Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia.

Through the use of technology, Waldie has completed work on her master’s degree from the University of South Dakota entirely on line.

At Chadron State, she was a member of several vocal groups, frequently sang the National Anthem at basketball games and was a member of the Golden Eagles dance team.

To say the least, Bellis likes big bands. His Worland High School band is among the largest in Wyoming with at least 150 members. He also is the founder and executive director of the Wyoming High School All-State Marching Band that has had up to 500 members while participating in many of the nation’s most glamorous events.

A native of Fremont, Bellis was the drum major for the CSC marching band before graduating in 1974. He has been chosen District Music Educator of the Year five times, has been the National Federation Music Educator twice, was one of 10 band directors nationwide to receive the John Philip Sousa Foundation’s Legion of Honor Award in 1998 and was selected the Wyoming Music Education of the Year in 2004.

In 2001, he was one of 10 Wyoming educators awarded the Arch Coal “Teacher Achievement Award for Excellence.”

Bellis and his wife Dawn, who also attended Chadron State and is the Worland High guidance counselor, organized the Wyoming All-State Marching Band in 1991, when they took 185 students to the Rose Bowl Parade. Since then, he’s led bandsmen from across the Cowboy State to the Macy’s Parade in New York on Thanksgiving 1994, the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin, Ireland, in 1998, the Rose Bowl Parade in 2000 and the George W. Bush/ Dick Cheney Inauguration Parades in Washington, D.C., in 2001 and 2005, among others

This past spring, his Worland band performed in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Dublin.

Several times, bandsmen from all 47 school districts across the state have performed with the all-state bands that Bellis has directed. The 500-member Wyoming band at the Rose Bowl Parade in 2000 is believed to have been the largest in the history of the event, stretching two blocks.

Knight is a 1965 graduate of Chadron State who was a highly successful high school and college coach the first 16 years after graduating and is now a successful businessman in Texas. He and his son own and operate Knight Fuels, which provides expertise to its customers and works out the contracts between a huge gasoline supplier and more than 80 convenience stores, truck stops and regular service stations throughout Texas.

“I’ve been really lucky,” he says. “I’ve showed up at the right time. I’ve gone into situations where good things were waiting to happen. I’ve tried to stress a positive attitude and generate support that have helped make it work.”

Knight initially taught and coached two years at St. Edward, Neb., and then five years at North Bend, Neb. In both instances, he turned losing programs into winning ones. With his encouragement, more than a dozen of his North Bend athletes went on to play college football, including four who came to Chadron State.

The next four years he served as the offensive coordinator for the football team at Midland Lutheran College in Fremont. He spent the next five years as the head football coach at Texas Lutheran College at Seguin.

In 1981, with the encouragement from a Texas Lutheran booster, Knight was introduced to the Texas oil and gas business. Four years later, he began Knight Fuels, which holds the exclusive contract to represent Tetco, a massive petroleum supplier, in obtaining customers for its gasoline. Sixty-six of the customers are convenience stores, which Knight Fuels assist in various ways. Knight Fuels also owns three car washes.

Knight is a trustee of the Chadron State Foundation. His wife, Deanie, also attended Chadron State. Both are natives of Potter.