William) Wesley Dulitz died August 5th, 2013, at the age of 90 years and one month, at his
farm home south of Webster, fulfilling his wish to die on the farm where he was born.

Memorial services will be Wednesday the 14th of August at 11am at the United Methodist
Church in Webster, with the Revs. Eugene and Marilyn Moeller officiating. A light lunch will
follow the service. Suzanne Olawsky will be the soloist and Mary Bloom the organist. Wesley's
ashes will be committed at Webster Cemetery and scattered on the farm where he lived
almost all his life.

The family may be visited Tuesday the 13th between 5pm and 7pm at the
Coester Funeral Home in Webster, with an informal service at 6pm.
Memorials may be given in Wesley's honor to the Tree of Life mission in Rosebud and the Day
County Arts Council; contact the church for more information.

The third of four siblings, Wesley was born July 6th, 1923, to Frank and Louise (Roehrich)
Dulitz, on the Dulitz homestead in Morton Township. He was baptized and confirmed at the
Morton Methodist Church a half-mile from his home. He attended the Morton School for eight
years and graduated from Webster High School, where the boys from the Morton School
formed a tight-knit social group known for various pranks and hijinks.

In his early years he was a member of the local threshing crew, skilled at the art of
controlling the team of horses on the bundle wagon by voice as he pitched bundles from the
rear of the wagon. It was said that he once broke a horse on the bundle wagon. When the
reins of the bundle wagon fell to the ground and the team charged forward out of control, he
managed to jump back on the wagon and stop it before damage was done, leading the crew
to accuse him of "running a rodeo."

Wesley studied Electrical Engineering for one year at South Dakota State University before
returning to work on the farm when his brother Elmer was drafted into the Navy. After the
war, he worked for a year at the Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, South Dakota, saving money
to buy his first land next to highway 25 south of Webster, and his first tractor, an
Allis-Chalmers WD.

After returning from Lead, Wesley lived and farmed all his life on the Dulitz homestead. He
met world traveler Ruth Herbst at a meeting in Watertown, where Paul and Shirley Kuecker of
Webster also met. Wesley and Ruth were married near Ruth's home at St. John Lutheran
Church, Hillside, on March 18th, 1967, with many Day County residents riding to the wedding
on a school bus chartered by Marlin Schmidt of Webster. The couple honeymooned in Mexico
City.

On December 27th, 1969, he drove through a blizzard to Watertown so his wife could give
birth to his son Daniel. During the next 20 years, he made vast changes in his practice of
farming. He was one of the area's first farmers to replace the disc and moldboard plow with
the chisel plow, to coordinate crop rotation so that chemical carryover could provide weed
control, to plant sunflowers and later soybeans, to use an air seeder, and to receive TV and
weather information by satellite. He was also an early user of futures and options for hedging
and only rarely lost sleep over them.

Wesley was an amateur radio operator, WA0RGZ, and a member of the American Radio Relay
League. He purchased an early home computer, a TRS-80, to do the farm taxes, at a time
when spreadsheets didn't exist and in order to run a program you had to write it first. He
learned a computer language by reading a book included with the computer, wrote his tax
program, and enjoyed using it for several years before discovering the benefits of an
accountant.

He was a longtime director of the Lake Region Rural Electric Cooperative, an officer of Morton
Township, a director of the South Dakota Wheat Growers, and an officer of the Day County
Democratic Party. He was Treasurer and member of the Church Council at St. John's
Lutheran Church, and also an active member of the United Methodist Church.

In the mid-1990's he combined his last harvest and retired, to his deep sadness, without
passing the farm to the next generation. He continued raising cattle until 2010.

Wesley was preceded in death by his loving and dedicated wife Ruth, who he missed terribly
in the last four years of his life, and his elder brother Elmer Dulitz of Webster.

He is survived
by his son Daniel and daughter-in-law Alice Sheppard of Palo Alto, California, his elder sister
Margaret Wildhaber, of Chehalis, Washington, his younger sister Catherine Beatty-Holt, of
Sonoma, California, his sister-in-law Hazel (Erdmann) Dulitz, of rural Webster, his niece Diane
(Dulitz) Olson of St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and his nephews David Dulitz and Paul Dulitz of Webster, SD.