George S. Mickelson

Mickelson was born in Mobridge, South Dakota. His grandfather was a Norwegian immigrant.[3] His parents, George Theodore Mickelson and Madge Mickelson, were the Governor and First Lady of South Dakota from 1947 to 1951.

Mickelson graduated from the University of South Dakota with a bachelor's in business administration in 1963 and from the University of South Dakota School of Law in 1965. He was a brother in Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity at USD. He served in the United States Army, including a tour of duty in Vietnam.[2] He married Linda McCahren and they had three children, Amy, David and Mark.[4]

Mickelson served as South Dakota State Assistant Attorney General (1967–68) and South Dakota State Attorney, Brookings County (1971–74). First elected to the South Dakota House of Representatives in 1974, he held office there for six years, serving as Speaker for the final two years. Mickelson was elected governor in 1986 and reelected four years later. [2]

On April 19, 1993, Mickelson was one of eight people aboard a state-owned airplane returning to South Dakota from a lobbying effort in Ohio. The plane, a Mitsubishi MU-2 turboprop, reported engine trouble while flying near Dubuque, Iowa, and crashed into a farm silo about four miles south of Zwingle.[1] Everyone on the plane was killed. Mickelson was succeeded as governor by then-Lieutenant Governor Walter Dale Miller. The crash happened on the same day as the end of the Branch Davidian siege near Waco, Texas, which overshadowed it in national news coverage.[5][6]

George S. Mickelson Middle School in Brookings is named after him, as is the George S. Mickelson Trail in the Black Hills and the George S. Mickelson Center for the Neurosciences in Yankton, South Dakota. The George S. Mickelson Education Center at Southeast Technical Institute in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, was built in 1990. The George S. Mickelson Great Service Award is given out annually by the South Dakota Office of Tourism. His alma mater, the University of South Dakota, awards academically talented South Dakota students with high ACTs/SATs a full-tuition scholarship known as the George S. Mickelson Scholarship. It is the university's most prestigious scholarship.[7]

• George S. Mickelson Trail

• George S. Mickelson Great Service Award
• Governor George S. Mickelson portrait
• New York Times Obituary: Governor George Mickelson 4/21/1993
• National Governors Association
• Dubuque, IA Area Governors Plane Crashes, Apr 1993 at GenDisasters.com
• Appearances on C-SPAN