The Rev. Robert W. Haire, a
Catholic missionary priest, was head and shoulders
above his contemporaries. Among other
institutions in town, he founded St. Luke’s Hospital.
He is also largely responsible for South Dakota's groundbreaking constitutional amendment to allow initiative and referendum by citizens.
He converted to Catholicism as he was about to enter law school in his native Michigan, and studied to be a priest.
In June, 1880, after six years of service in Detroit and Flint, he left Michigan and came to Dakota Territory, where he filed on a homestead near Columbia in Brown County.
He built a sod church with his own hands on his claim and began his long, distinguished ministry to his church.
Priests were few on
the frontier and Father Haire's parish extended from Springfield, Minnesota, to Oakes, North Dakota.
As Aberdeen grew in population it became the center of his activities and in 1886 he
became priest of the Aberdeen parish. Shortly afterwards, he induced the Presentation Sisters to move their academy from Fargo to Aberdeen.
In 1902 he founded St. Luke's Hospital, later becoming its chaplain, a
post he held until his death on March 4, 1916. Physically distinguished by a full beard,
worn by special dispensation
because of a throat ailment.
Father Haire was a familiar and colorful part of early Aberdeen. He was an ardent
prohibitionist and addicted to making street corner speeches on the subject. These discourses always drew
a large crowd.
Feeling sometimes ran high on these occasions and the speech
was often interrupted by hecklers. Once a leading liquor dealer of the city called out from the crowd: "You're nothing but a demagogue, anyway." As Father Haire caught sight of the flushed face of the
heckler, he replied: "Ah, a demagogue,
eh? If you had a bit of straw around your neck you'd pass for
a demijohn,"
referring to the word for a bottle of booze.
Essentially, Father Haire was a crusader. He believed in the greatest good for the greatest number, in the intrinsic
worth and dignity of the human being, both as an individual and as part of the social body, and above all, he believed in a democracy functioning democratically on the widest possible base.
A vital, intelligent, and scholarly personality, yet he was no dilettante, and be worked long and
hard to put his theories into practice.
The Initiative and Referendum amendment to the state Constitution,
which served as a model for others of its kind was, to a large extent, written by Haire and adopted by the Populists through
his efforts. He was a member of the Farmers' Alliance and the Populist Party, and was one of the founders of the Knights of
Labor in Aberdeen.
His outspokenness and independence eventually brought
him into serious conflict with the Catholic hierarchy and he was suspended from active priesthood for a period of years.
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| NSU Monument to Father Robert W Haire "Humanity's Friend" |
The charge was finally
dismissed by
the Pope, who reinstated him. Generally,
his character defused any efforts to discredit
him with members of his faith and the citizens of the town.
Haire was probably Aberdeen's
best beloved man in life and when he died citizens
erected a monument to him on the campus of the Northern State Teachers' College. A large bronze medallion set in a granite obelisk memorializes him as "Humanity's Friend.”
—Compiled and Written by the South Dakota Writers Project 1940
