Willie May "Billie" Busse was born in St. Louis, Mo on November 24, 1932 to Wayne and Willie May Scheidegger. She is survived by son Ed (Kathy) Rodgers, grandson Jason and granddaughter Renee, son Jim (Lynn) Rodgers, and grandsons Gregory and Michael, daughter Debbie (Tim) O'Leary, and great grandson Adair, stepsons Tom and Larry Busse and their families. She was preceded in death by her husband Tom and her grandson Brandon. She was a St. Louis "city girl" until age 16, when the Scheidegger's bought and moved to a 240 acre farm near St. Clair, Mo. This cultural reversal thrust her into an environment of plowing and cultivating corn, breaking horses, slopping hogs, and hand milking 6 cows twice a day (later this became 20+ cows by machine), seven days a week. Her first plowing, cultivating, and harvesting experiences were behind a team horses. Fortunately, when income allowed a tractor and implements were purchased. Billie had two boys, Ed and Jim Rodgers, by her first marriage. Her second marriage to Tom Busse, some twelve years later, added two step-sons, Tommy and Larry Busse to the family. A couple of years later the marriage was blessed with the birth of her daughter, Deborha Sue Busse (O'Leary). She was preceded in death by her husband Tom and her grandson Brandon. Billie and her husband Tom bought and lived on a farm 10 miles from St. Clair, Mo. To supplement their income they initially share cropped hay and row crops. Later she fed up to 75 bucket calves at a time to supplement income. Share cropping returned Billie to a tractor seat. This skill was now expanded to include raking and bailing hay. So now a typical 16 hour day would begin at daybreak with breakfast and lunch preparation for the family. Lunch was eaten in the field as there was not time nor money to travel back home for meals. Haying would begin around 9 am when the dew left and end late in the evening when the dew returned, or the field was bailed, or darkness prevented further work. Now there was supper to fix, clothes to wash, and a house to keep. Billie was always up working well past the time everyone else was in bed and then up again well before anyone else to fix breakfast. Of course, any spare time was spent in her half acre garden in the summer and canning hundreds of quarts of corn, beans, and tomatoes in the fall. Her children now grown up and upon her husband's demise, Billie was forced to sell the farm she'd worked for the past 28 years. Now, at age 60, she took over the management and maintenance duties of Capitol Bell Apartments, a 90 unit complex in Pierre, SD. She continued in these duties until Alzheimer's forced her to retire at age 81. During the 21 year time span at Capitol Bell she single handedly washed and painted every wall in the complex at least once and more than likely several times. She unplugged sinks and toilets, repaired, retextured and painted holes in drywall, and devised ways to remove impossible carpet stains, even red Kool-Aid stains. To her credit, she knew the name of virtually every tenant in the complex and the unit they occupied. Unknown to most all who knew her, Billie was a woman as noted by Rudyard Kipling's If "who watched the things she'd given her life to, broken, and stooped and built em up with worn out tools", not once, but thrice and "never spoke a word of her loss". Those who think they knew her will remember her not only as the hard worker she was, but also as someone always eager to lend a helping hand. She always said she got a lot of self-satisfaction out of an honest, hard days work; but her children believe she'd like to be remembered most as the helping, caring person she was.