MINNEHAHA COUNTY, SD (KELO) — 93-year-old Berniece Mayer of Sioux Falls took a wagon ride at McCrossan Boys Ranch on Friday where she and her late husband Jerry once served as the ranch’s first directors.
“Now the ranch has gotten so much bigger and so much,” Mayer said. “They have more specialties, more staff to take of the special needs that some of these young men have.”
The nonprofit provides schooling, structure, guidance and a home for boys in need of a little extra support. Well-wishers gathered around Mayer as she and Jerry were inducted into the McCrossan Founders Circle.
“They got the ranch really started,” said Christy Vastenhout, who works as chief development officer at McCrossan Boys Ranch. “They took in the first boys, they treated them like family and they started the trajectory of the ranch and what we have here today.”
“To me, it means a new home for people, for young boys,” Mayer said.
While Jerry passed away earlier in 2024 at the age of 93, he was in the room Friday.
“He is in spirit, and of course there’s pictures all over,” Mayer said.
The ranch launched in 1955. Today, around 50 boys are at the ranch located just a short trot from where Interstates 90 and 29 intersect. And had the lives of Berniece and Jerry Mayer not intersected with this ranch, the boys’ lives may have gone in entirely different directions.
“I’m really proud of the direction that the ranch has taken,” Mayer said. “In the beginning it was not that easy to establish a new concept, so we kind of learned as we went along.”
“If they hadn’t stepped up, who knows where the ranch would be today,” Vastenhout said.
Berniece is also grandmother to Eric Mayer, digital content manager at KELOLAND Media Group.
