Governor Bill Janklow

William John “Bill” Janklow was born in Chicago in 1939. He grew up in Flandreau. After serving in the US Marine Corps, he married Flandreau native Mary Dean Thom. They raised three children: Russell, Pam, and Shonna. After graduating from the University of South Dakota and the USD School of Law, Bill became a Legal Aid lawyer on the Rosebud Sioux Reservation.

South Dakota voters elected Bill Attorney General in 1974, Governor in 1978, 1982, 1994, and 1998, and to Congress in 2002. During his unprecedented four terms as governor, Bill made state government more efficient and innovative; helped save the state’s farm-to-market railroads; changed the mission of Dakota State University to a nationally acclaimed computer school; converted USD/Springfield into a minimum security prison where inmates learn job skills; brought Citibank and other financial service companies to South Dakota; exercised a front line approach to the state’s resources to natural disasters; promoted South Dakota through such activities as the Governor’s Pheasant Hunt, Governor’s Snowmobile Ride, Custer State Park Buffalo Roundup, and Capitol Christmas Trees, and used prison inmates to wire the state’s school buildings for Internet access—earning South Dakota the honor of being the most wired state in America.