Kathleen Ann Perrigo (nee Murphy), of Imlay (Badlands) South Dakota passed away in the early morning of Sunday, April 28, 2024 in the Sandhills of Nebraska. She was 82.
Kathleen served as the youngest member of the forty-sixth and forty-seventh sessions of the South Dakota House of Representatives from 1971-1972 when she represented Pennington County. She remained active in politics and enjoyed service to her fellow citizens. Science and public police were a life-long passion.
She was born in the New Underwood hospital where her mother, Lorena Murphy (nee Hodgin), was a nurse. Kathleen spent her youth between Creston and Imlay, both now ghost towns, which are located east of Rapid City on highway 44. Imlay was laid out and platted by the railroad in the early 1900’s. And her family built the structure known as the Creston Dinosaur.
Kathleen attended the little one room school at Imlay through the eighth grade. She graduated from Rapid City High School in 1959 and went on to attend Sacramento State College and the South Dakota School of Mine with a study emphasis in biology. She was also a volunteer tutor at Box Elder Job Corps Camp and a reader for the Library of Congress books for the blind.
Other passions of Kathleen’s were her photography and study of Western South Dakota native birds. Her favorite places to be were on the prairie of the old Imlay homestead or in the Sandhills of Nebraska, seeking out birds and animal life, all creatures great and small, and photographing their interactions with the native grasses and flowers. In September of 2022 Carnegie Arts Center (CAC) in Alliance, NE held a showing of her most prize photos. The CAC still offers her photography in their gallery store. Kathleen’s website https://theprairieviper.com/biography.htm will be updated shortly with photos from her collection. The family requests remembrances of love and kindness be passed on to all inhabits of this earth.
Kathleen is survived by her two daughters, Rebecca and Lorena, two grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
Her ashes will be set free to the wind at Imlay where she can fly with the birds and nourish the landscape for the smallest of animals and where the buffalo (bison) roam.