Erin Beck

MCOM 316
12/6/2013
Bill Lee Profile
Dusty glass Coke bottles from another era
line the wall. Heat tumbles out from a woodburning stove into the drafty barn loft.
A painted cow skull with glass eyes stares
blankly down on intruders from its mounted
position.
Enamel coffee pots, 70s Hobo Day relics,
band saws and wood lathes and sanders and
drill presses, every tool and part imaginable
crowd work benches crammed under the
rafters.
Welcome to Bill Lees woodshop near
Colman, S.D., where dilapidated objects
from history begin their road to recovery
and restoration.
For Lee, its not a hobby or a 40 hour-aweek job. Its not about the money or the
benefits.
Instead, its a passion. Its a love for history.
A preservation of heritage and an eye for
detail.
And its a challenge.
Lee, at 61, has retired from his work at the
South Dakota Agricultural Heritage
Museum in Brookings to focus on restoring
machinery at his farm and any other projects
that happen to come his way.
Lees philosophy with his work is simple.

The goal in any restoration is to keep it as

original as possible, Lee says.
While the philosophy is simple, the process
isnt. For many people undertaking
restorations, its tempting to modify the
original creation. Lee doesnt.
Ive learned how critical it is to preserve
history, Lee says. Its way too easy for
people to do what they think is right.
Which in Lees mind defeats the purpose of
restoration. He isnt here to improve history,
he wants to resurrect it to its original
condition. When he restores a farm
implement or piece of machinery, he gives
detail top priority, even down to leaving the
runs in the paint from the initial
manufacturer.
Historical restorations werent at the top of
Lees list when he first blazed out his career
path. Like any aspiring person with talent,
he went to South Dakota State University in
search of a degree. He picked up extra work
through an archaeology class that led him to
the Black Hills, where he unveiled and
recreated an entire mammoth skeleton.
Lee eventually majored in art, but he never
finished his degree. Instead he worked as a
welder in Colman and later ran a machine
shop in Volga. He took over the old family
farm, all the while gaining a skills set that he
would need to turn his passion into a reality.
Lee took his first dive into the restoration
business 36 years ago when he began

volunteering at the South Dakota

Agricultural Heritage Museum. His skills
soon landed him a full-time job restoring
farm machinery and building all the museum
displays and exhibits from the ground up.
While Lee has been fueled by a fervent
passion and cultivated a talent that has
greatly contributed to the projects hes
tackled, those havent been the only keys to
his success. Hes turned to experts that have
come before him.
Ive picked out people that do this kind of
work, and I copy them, Lee says.
In a business where research fills 50 percent
of his time devoted to restoration, Lee
chooses his projects wisely.
I like a challenge, Lee says. Once a
challenge is over, thats kind of where the
project ends. I dont like to be defeated by a
project.
An example of just such a challenge has
been Lees most recent and favorite project,
the Overby corn picker. Presented to him in
a heap of scrap metal and rotting wood, Lee
was taxed with the job to restore the 1904
farm implement back to its former glory.
The only model ever created, Lee had
nothing but a few pictures to piece together
what the picker originally looked like. With
a shop, equipment and all the tools he
needed at hand, Lee hand-built the parts and
pieces necessary to slowly stitch a pile of
rubble back into a corn picker.
Lee had to keep a sharp eye ready at all
times. Misplacing a piece by one-sixteenth
of an inch in one area could completely
throw dimensions off in another area on the

picker. Sometimes Lee would complete a

weeks worth of work on the picker, only to
discover he had made a mistake. Yet he
considers the setbacks and frustrations worth
the satisfaction of overcoming the challenge
and setting the corn picker back on its feet.
Youve got to have the bad days to get the
good ones, Lee says.
Lee devoted 1,600 hours of work on the
Overby corn picker, equal to 40 weeks of a
typical 9 to 5 job. Lee estimated another
2,500 hours of research could be added to
the time already spent on the picker.
Jim Peters, a member in the Overby family
that contributed the corn picker to the Ag
Heritage Museum, has seen Lees work
throughout the years.
What amazes me with Bill is that as long as
hes been in it, he still has the passion for
it, Peters said. He has the knowledge and
the patience. Hes premiere at this.
Finding a replacement for Lee has been no
easy task at the museum. Curator Dawn
Stephens said Lees position hasnt been
filled yet, and she doesnt anticipate a
substitute being found any time soon.
You have to be artistic and mechanical at
the same time, Stephens said, and most
people arent. In the real world, theyd have
to hire three different people to do that job:
someone to do restorations, someone doing
exhibits and someone doing the machinery.
Lees job at the museum included
maneuvering forklifts, running tractors and
moving heavy equipment. He worked as a
mechanic, fixed and restored historical

machinery, built exhibits, designed graphics

and had to write effectively.
You dont have people that can pull
engines apart that are art majors, Stephens
said. I just dont know how youd find
somebody who could do everything that he
did.
With a wealth of exhibits on display at the
museum, its easy to believe its always
looked that way. The museums track record
shows otherwise.
The building was pretty much empty when
I started, Lee says.
Lee saw more than an empty building,
though. While many may be tempted to wait
for someone to show up and fill open floor
space, Lee was driven to go out and find that
history.
I did a lot of collection work, Lee says.
Id talk to people, track stuff down and get
it donated to the museum.
A major landslide in the museums
collection began in 1988 with the Beckman
Archives. Donated by Eugene Beckmans
son, the collection consists of original sales
brochures, operator manuals, parts lists and
sales premiums. Beckman began collecting
in the 1940s from John Deere dealerships
and any other company willing to donate.
An historical treasure trove with material
dating back to the 1800s, the Beckman
Archives includes almost 1,500 manuals and
brochures along with hundreds of
agricultural books and catalogs.
The Smithsonian wanted this collection,
Lee says, but it was given to the museum.

From there began an intensive process in

building up the museums stockpile of South
Dakota history.
Lee describes his work as an outreach
program.
No one was coming to the museum, so we
had to go to them, Lee says.
Lee and Stephens took the 1915 John Deere
Dain haypress out to the masses,
representing the museum as they traveled to
shows across South Dakota into neighboring
states.
Everything that was donated to the museum
came because of that haypress out there
meeting people, Lee says.
Covering the state, meeting people and
convincing them that the museum was the
right place for their history was the
foundation for many of the exhibits now at
the museum. Through Lees diligence, the
South Dakota Made exhibits evolved with
the discovery of the Farmhorse tractors, a
display housing the entire Farmhorse tractor
collection manufactured in South Dakota.
This stuff is not replaceable, Lee says.
Certain attitudes in the world dont see that.
If you dont appreciate it, if its just a job, it
wont last long.
With entire buildings overflowing with cars
from the early 1900s, trucks, pickups,
tractors, giant cranes, crawlers, steam
traction engines and bulldozers, Lee already
has a personal collection big enough to fill
his own museum. But building a multimillion dollar legacy isnt a top-notch goal
in Lees mind.

My goal is to have one more dollar in my

account at the end of the year than I did at
the beginning, Lee says.
Barry Dunn, dean of the College of Ag and
Bio at SDSU, has championed Lees cause
and has supported his work throughout the
years at the Ag Heritage Museum.
Hes an artisan, Dunn said. Its beyond a
commitment; his dedication to the craft of
restoration and preservation is just amazing.
I think it borders on genius. It expresses
itself in preservation and restoration of our
past. Hes devoted to doing things at a level
of excellence. Ive known very few people
that have that devotion to excellence in
anything.
The reason Lee can work at such a level
stems back to the fact that he isnt working

for money. Driven by his fascination for

anything old with an air of mystery behind
it, Lee has a passion for preserving stuff
nobody else thinks is worth preserving.
And to bring dead history back to life with a
vision of accuracy, Lee will go back to the
original source.
Ive made him a heroic figure, Dunn said.
But he is.
Not because Lee has a hobby. Not because
he earns a 40 hour-a-week paycheck or is
becoming a millionaire.
But because its his passion to preserve
history the way it was made.
And because its a challenge.