(Editor's note: In August, The Plainsman published a four-part series on the unsolved mystery of the death of Huron businessman Glen Waibel in February 1953. A year ago, the daughter of Waibel's best friend published a book based on the case. This is Judith Blake Schaefer's story.)

BY ROGER LARSEN
OF THE PLAINSMAN

Rarely a day goes by that the wind doesn't blow in Huron.

Or in Chicago.

So when it was time for Judith Blake Schaefer to pen a title for her book on the death of a man she considered to be like a second father, it came naturally. Huron and Chicago are both well known to her.

Schaefer, the daughter of Ambrose and Martha Blake of Huron, started writing "Though the Winds Blow" in 1997. She was living in Vermont, where she was working as a clinical psychologist.

She wrote off and on for the next eight years — remembering and recording all of the tears and emotions and questions in the days and weeks after her dad's best friend died at home, the victim of two gunshot wounds to the head.

Schaefer suffered another tragedy while writing her book. One of her sons was killed in an accident.

Unable to find a publisher for "Though the Winds Blow," she self-published. The book can be ordered through bookstores and is also available at the Huron Public Library.

Waibel's death in an upstairs bedroom of his home at 1375 Illinois Ave. S.W. on Feb. 21, 1953 remains a mystery to this day.

Some are convinced it was suicide. Others believe the well-known and prosperous hardware store owner was murdered by an extortionist. One nagging question no one has been able to answer is the disappearance of $9,500 in cash that Waibel had asked an employee and friend, Bill Schaffer, to bring to the house after cashing a check at the bank.

Judith Schaeffer has plenty of questions of her own — but, unlike at least one Waibel relative, she thinks the death was a suicide.

She has taken writing courses since the 1960s. She tackled the subject of Waibel's death as a way of "trying to get into his head, trying to find out what he was doing that day."

The day after a major snowstorm in Huron, hours passed between Schaffer's morning delivery of the cash to the Waibel home and that evening, when Schaffer and Ambrose Blake found their friend dead, an apparent suicide note nearby.

Donna Hados of Spring Hill, Florida, whose father, George Short, was a first cousin to Waibel, doesn't buy the explanation that Waibel killed himself. But Schaefer does.

"When it comes right down to it, it was loneliness," she said. "He had no family. We were there for him, but we weren't really his family." Waibel never married. His closest relatives were cousins who lived in Iowa and Illinois.

Now that she, too, lives alone, Schaeffer said she knows the feeling.

GROWING UP IN HURON

Judy Blake grew up at 506 Idaho Ave. S.E. As young boys, her father and Waibel were raised in houses next door to each other in that same block. Later, and throughout their adult lives, they went on many fishing trips together. Photos have captured the beaming faces of the best friends as they held up their catches.

Ambrose Blake, a staunch Republican, was postmaster in the late 1920s and early 1930s until Franklin Roosevelt became president. He sold insurance and served as director of finance for the state of South Dakota. He retired in 1948.

But along with the outdoors, his passion was politics, local, state and national.

He was on the City Commission and was chairman of the Beadle County Republican Party in the 1950s. He was a delegate to the 1952 GOP convention in Chicago, where Judith was living at the time. She and her husband also attended the convention.

Long before his daughter's birth, Blake served in the state Legislature and was once speaker of the House.

"It was his life really, he loved it," she said.

After high school, Judith Schaefer earned a bachelor of arts degree in liberal arts and a Ph.D in human development from the University of Chicago. She raised two sons with her husband of 34 years while doing research and teaching psychology and child development at two colleges in the Boston area.

She now lives in West Newton, Mass.

The first half of her book is based "pretty much on what I experienced" after Waibel's death. At the time, she was a young wife living in Chicago. She returned to Huron to be with her parents in February 1953 as they were dealing with the loss of their long-time friend.

In her book, she tells the story, in part, through conversations with a so-called boyfriend named Richard. In reality, he was her husband. She also writes about talks she had with her sister, when actually she had a brother. "My husband and I had exchanged letters during that whole time," she said. Schaefer fortunately saved all of those letters, the ones she had sent and the ones she had received. They were an excellent source of information while writing her book, along with the original newspaper clippings and "a fairly good memory, too."

While the first half of "Though the Winds Blow" is based on her experience, she cautions the reader the second half is pure fiction. In those chapters, she solves the case, but again reminds people she made it up. That writing device, she says, was suggested by her editor.

SO MANY QUESTIONS

Fifty-three years after Glen Waibel died, questions remain. Schaefer wonders if hardware store employee, Bill Schaffer, was the recipient of the $9,500 that Waibel asked him to get that day. In his will, Waibel had rewarded each employee $1,000 for every year they worked for him. It would have meant nearly another $10,000 on top of the $28,000 Schaffer was given for his years of service, but he was also a valued, loyal employee and friend.

She wonders if Waibel may have asked Schaffer not to tell anyone about the extra cash.

Could it have been a gift for being so good to him? Could he have decided to end his life, and presented the cash to Schaffer at the door so others wouldn't find out?

Or, perhaps, the money went to someone else, like a nurse who cared for Waibel's mother in her last years while she lived in his house. "It certainly is a mystery what happened to the money," Schaefer said. "They hired a private detective at the end to track down strangers in town. I think the biggie is what did happen to that money since it never showed up, no one ever came forward."

It's also uncertain what Waibel was doing in his house all day — window shades unusually drawn, allowing no one including Schaffer to enter &mdash on a Saturday when his store was open.

"I don't know," Schaefer said. "I really don't know what he was doing." But he did have a business appointment that evening at the Marvin Hughitt Hotel, an appointment he obviously didn't keep.

When Schaefer was home from Chicago for Waibel's funeral, her grandmother died after suffering a stroke.

"We wondered if Glen may have thought, 'Who is going to take care of me if something happens to me?'" she said. "We talked about every conceivable thing."

There were worries in the Blake family that townspeople would point fingers at them because they benefited the most financially in Waibel's will. They inherited the beautiful Waibel home and land and the Blake children were given money for their education. Schaefer said she may not have been able to get her doctorate without the money from Waibel.

"We did get a few crank calls," she said. She wrote about those in her book. They also worried people would think Ambrose Blake had something to do with his friend's death.

"One caller said, 'What did you do with the money and hung up,'" she said. There were questions about whether someone was blackmailing Waibel. Her father wondered about that, too. But there were also no signs of a struggle in the house.

Schaefer also can't answer another question.

The suicide note found near Waibel's body, written on Waibel's stationary and identified by friends as his handwriting, was addressed to A.B., and not Ambrose or Molly, his nickname.

She doesn't know why Waibel wrote A.B.

"It's something we talked about, too, why did he do that?" she said. "He never called him Molly, he called him Ambrose."

The nickname of Molly dates to Blake's childhood. He told Judith that when he was in the fourth grade there was a little girl with red hair and freckles named Molly. Friends teased him by calling him Molly because the girl wasn't pretty.

HURON IS HOME

Judith Blake Schaefer has spent her adult life in other places, but still considers this to be home. She has fond memories of Huron. "My roots are really there," she said.

She has been back from time to time, especially for high school reunions, the last one in 1998.

Her father, Ambrose, died in 1963, and her mother, Martha, lived another 20 years in the Illinois Avenue house before her death. The family still owns the farmland Waibel willed to the Blakes.

Judith Schaefer never lived in the Illinois house, but did visit there over the years after leaving Huron, marrying and raising her own family. But she said they did look, without success, for the missing cash in the house, even though authorities had searched it several times in the days after Waibel's death.

"I guess I'm not ever going to solve it," she said.

Glen Waibel died at age 64.

He was a very quiet, reticent man, who was an immaculate dresser. He was found dressed in a suit after having bathed. Hados described him as a perfect gentleman, a well-dressed man who cared about his appearance. As far as she's concerned, it was not something special he did because he had decided to commit suicide.

Dressing well is something people did in those days, Schaefer said. "There was no casual Friday," she Schaefer said.

While others may disagree, she prefers to think her second "father" ended his own life.

Ambrose Blake struggled with the loss of his best friend, upset with the notion that if someone was threatening Waibel in his own home he could have tried to pass a note of warning, with the cash, to Schaffer.

Reports at the time were that Blake believed his friend was the victim of murder. Schaefer thinks today her father actually preferred to think it was suicide because, in his own heart, it would be easier to bear.

"I guess he felt that if it was really his decision (to end his life) there would have been no way to forestall it," she said, "but if had been murder there was maybe some way to stop it."

After its investigation, a coroner's jury ruled the death as suicide. A state law enforcement agent testified it could easily have taken two bullets from a .22-caliber revolver.

Still, the case was left open in that authorities said that if evidence of a crime was ever found there could be a subsequent prosecuion. After 53 years, that hasn't happened.

When she retired, Schaefer's daughter-in-law suggested she write her memoirs. As she thought about it, it became clear that if she ever pursued a book it would have to revolve around the unresolved passing of Glen Waibel, because "the most critical event of my life was this death," she said. "It had an incredible impact on my life," Schaefer said.

And the winds of uncertainty are still blowing.