Martha L. Holsti
March 24, 1941 - January 21, 2024
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Martha L. Holsti, 82 of Belle Fourche, SD, passed away on Sunday, January 21, 2024 at the Monument Health in Spearfish, SD.
Funeral Services for Martha will be held on Saturday, January 27, 2024 at 1:00pm at the Spearfish Seventh-Day Adventist Church with burial to follow in the Cave Hills Cemetery, rural Buffalo, SD.
I, Martha Lu (Boyd) Holsti, was born March 24, 1941 the second of six children to Earl Wesley and Ursul Mae (Woody) Boyd, in Adams County, Iowa. My young parents lived on 40 acres that Mother’s parents had given them. There was no house, only a barn. I was born in that barn, much to the horror of the physician attending the birth who wrote in the newspaper that he was aghast to deliver a baby just across from a bawling cow!
When I was a year old, our parents moved me and my older sister, Mary, to Washington state where Earl worked in the shipyards, building ships for the war effort (World War II). On the way through South Dakota, we visited my father’s folks (William and Lulu Grace Boyd) who lived in Kimball, SD and celebrated my first birthday there. Throughout the years we came back to Kimball many times to visit. I proclaimed in my pre-teen years that I would never live in South Dakota and I would never marry a farmer, (both of which I ended up doing!)
Our family moved around some, living on farms in Oregon, Idaho, and California. Later, we moved and farmed in Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. When our father was attending pastoral college in Ohio and West Virginia, he moved the family to those places as well.
By the time I graduated 8th grade, I had been taught by 18 different teachers.
I graduated salutatorian of Odell High School at Odell, Nebraska.
By 1964, I had attained some college education and experience in teaching as well as in nursing. That year I came to Harding County, and accepted the job of teaching the Painter School, a group of all girls where Gordon Holsti’s nieces attended. Gordon faithfully came to all the school programs and eventually I got acquainted with him and started helping him with ranch chores, painting corrals, checking cows, and cooking for him and Ida, his mother who became bed-ridden at the time.
December 23, 1965, we were married at the Cave Hills Lutheran church. Kenneth Burghduff, one of my patrons at the Tarter/Slick Creek school, drove the team and wagon that brought me to the church. It was a simple but beautiful wedding. We were married nearly 51 years.
I graduated Black Hills State University with a degree in education and psychology. For 9 years I taught one-room country schools, often with 1st through 8th grades enrolled there.
We were blessed in 1967 when John Boyd Holsti was born. Another blessing, Joseph Mark, was born in 1969. The boys spent a lot of time riding along on whatever equipment Gordon and I were operating at the time. Gordon welded barrels on each so that we could have them with us all of the time. I swathed hay for 40 years. I did summer fallowing, planted grain, combined and hauled grain to town. I broke sod, chisel plowed, and disked along side Gordon who had the matching piece of equipment. He did not have a matching swather, though.
Gordon and I raised the two boys who attended school in the area or wherever I was teaching school. One of the highlights of my life was our family trip to Europe when the boys were11 and 13 years old.
Another highlight was visiting the Assemblies of Yahweh in Rocheport, MO; Eaton Rapids, MI; Frystown, PA; Sterling, IL, and Cisco, TX.
John married Melanie Stevens, another highlight of my life. They have two daughters, Morgan and Camille and live in Tennessee.
Mark lives on his place in rural Belle Fourche. I talked to him every day.
I loved to travel by bus, car, truck, plane, or train. I loved poetry and stories, writing them and giving oral presentations.
My latest challenge in life was learning to operate a smart phone. Hopefully I won’t need it in the next life. The ultimate smart phone is the human body and I haven’t figured that out either.
I lived in an apartment in Spearfish until I could no longer live alone and then moved into the Rolling Hills Nursing Home in Belle Fourche for about a week before having to go into ICU/Comfort Care at the Spearfish Hospital.
Yes, I truly was born in a barn and I really did raise my kids in a barrel. But it was all good.
Those who have gone before Martha: parents, Wesley and Ursul Boyd; infant brother, Paul Albert Boyd; her husband, Gordon Holsti; a brother Mark Boyd.
Left behind to grieve Martha are her two sons: John (Melanie) and Mark Holsti; her granddaughters Morgan and Camille; Martha’s sister Mary Wallace, her brothers Luke and David, and nieces and nephews.
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