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Constance "Connie" Coughlin
10-23-2025

On August 13, 1928 Constance (Connie) Irene Coughlin came into the world at a hospital in Columbus, Nebraska. She was the oldest of seven children born to Howard Thille and Verona, nee Deitering. Her folks lived on a ranch, 12 miles from Elgin, Nebraska at the start of the “sand hill” country. Her father worked for his father.

Connie had whooping cough as a baby. As a child she had little contact with strangers so she didn’t talk when she started school. Her Dad took her to school at a country school over a mile and a half from their house on the back of his horse. Connie said that she can remember her teacher telling her Dad that she still didn’t talk in school. Sometime after that she started talking. When she was in grade school, they used to go ice skating with their teachers during lunch hour. They also played baseball and were sometimes late getting back into school because the game wasn’t finished. There was an artesian well at the school, which is still there where the school used to be.

She was the fastest runner in the county and when she took state exams in the 7^th and 8^th grade, she got the highest grades in the county. She had to go to a neighboring town to give a valedictory speech at their graduation. She was so scared and they didn’t like her doing this, since she wasn’t from their school.

Life on the ranch did not have modern conveniences. They didn’t have electricity or indoor plumbing and they had out-houses. Her father would often hunt for meat for their dinner. They had fish, geese, ducks and turtles for our meals.

Since she was the oldest child, she did a lot of chores around the ranch that girls rarely did. One time, she was raking in a field behind a team of horses, when they ran over a bee’s nest. The horses bolted, turned over the rake and she sprained her arm. She learned how to drive on a farm truck, pulling hay racks or other equipment.

She went to high school at Saint Boniface in Elgin, Nebraska. The first year she stayed with her aunt and uncle (Lucille and Art Dietering). Her grandmother (her dad’s mom) also bought a house and moved into town. It took about an hour to walk to school from their house. After that, her mom moved into town and all the kids moved to town with her. For fun they played games in the evening, but Connie would tell her grandmother that she was going to study with friends. 

In the evenings she played games until it was too dark to see, with the other young people in town. One of her friends was a boy who had a car and sometimes they would pile into the car (3-deep) and go out to the little Elgin airport to chase rabbits on the landing field.

After high school she went to Creighton Memorial Nursing Hospital Omaha for Nursing school. She would have rather been a doctor, but the family resources were tight and at that time it was a hard career for a woman to enter.  She was in nursing school for 3 years. After graduating she went to Saint Joseph’s hospital in Omaha. She worked on a floor where Creighton students were kept and it was there that she met her future husband, Tom Coughlin. He was in the hospital for an appendix operation. 

A bit later she started to date Tom. She told her family “I had to date him since he wouldn’t leave me alone”. She wasn’t ready to get married yet, though.  They dated about two years before they got married. She had been dating someone before she met Tom (a Veterinarian from Elgin) and she continued to do so after she met Tom for some time. Tom and Connie were married in 1952.

After graduating from Creighton, Tom took a job with General Adjustment Bureau. Tom and Connie moved to Aberdeen in Northern South Dakota for a while and then moved to Chamberlain, South Dakota where Tom Jr was born in 1955. When they first moved to Chamberlain she cooked on a hot plate and had a hard time finding a good apartment. 

They moved to Creston, Iowa in 1956 where her son Dan was born in 1957.  When Dan was young, he got a high temperature and a doctor came out to our house to treat him. They moved to Ottumwa, Iowa from Creston and stayed there about 3 years (until 1960). They moved from Ottumwa to Carroll, Iowa and stayed there for seven years. Carroll was the most fun. Tom Jr, and Dan both went to St. Joseph’s school. Tom Jr. became a good friend of Monsignor Lynch (he was from Ireland). St. Joseph was combined with St. Peter and Paul school and then the boys went to school there. Connie sang in the choir at St. Josephs (and also sang in the choir when she lived in Elgin).

Connie stopped working while the kids were small, but when the youngest started school she went back to nursing. She worked nights so she could be there when they left for school and when they got home. 

While living in Carroll, her family always participated in the Rolling Hills Estate 4^th of July celebration, where they built a house in Rolling Hills after living in another house for a couple of years. Connie was the Den Mother for her boy’s cub scout pack for several years. Tom Jr. and Dan were also in Boy Scouts while they lived in Carroll and went on campouts and hikes, often with Tom Sr. and other dads going with them.

The family moved from Carroll to Sioux Falls, South Dakota in 1968. Tom Sr. wanted to live near his mother and they ended up buying a big old house on South Prairie Ave that needed a lot of work. Tom Jr. and Dan went to the local Cathedral Grade School and then attended O’Gorman High School. 

When the family moved to Sioux Falls, she worked as a surgical nurse.  Sometimes she would tell my family about the injuries people had. When her son, Dan, got a motorcycle at 18 she told him about very bike accident head injury she worked on (Dan always wore a helmet when he rode). In the 1990’s she switched to the Obstetrics Department. Dan and Tom Jr. figure that she wanted to finish her career holding babies rather than human innards.

Connie retired in 1999 but she continued to do volunteer work at the hospital for many years after that. She also dedicated herself to genealogy work on her and her husband’s families and worked with the Sioux Valley Genealogical Society in Sioux Falls. In 2006 and 2007 she visited Massachusetts and Ireland looking for information with her son Tom. The visit to Ireland was part of a longer trip to England and Ireland where Tom was giving some lectures for the IEEE in Plymouth, Oxford, York and Galway.

Tom Sr. and Connie had been members of the United Commercial Traveler’s for many years and Connie served a while as the UCT Grand Counselor for South Dakota. She was also a cub scout den mother, served on the Avera Auxiliary after she retired from McKennen and helped at HR Block for people who couldn’t afford to pay to have their taxes done. She was also a member of the Catholic Daughters.

Connie had always been involved in sowing and making quilts. She made shirts and quilts for her immediate and extended family. Many of these quilts were gifts for graduations and other important events.

Tom Sr. and Connie moved from South Prairie to a smaller house on Charlotte Ave in Sioux Falls. in 1998. Dan and his family lived in her old house on Prairie. Her husband Tom Sr. died in 2001 and Dan and his family moved to the house next door to hers on Charlotte in 2015.

Connie was preceded in death by her parents: Howard and Verona Thille; her siblings: Kate, Howard, Donald, Marie and Doris, as well as her daughter-in-law: Kathy Talley Coughlin. Connie is survived by: sons: Tom (wife Fran) and Dan Coughlin; sister: Joan Wentworth; grandchildren: Will and Ben, Bridget and Rick; numerous cousins, nieces and nephews; and many friends made through the years.

Visitation will be Monday, November 3, 5:00 PM at Barnett-Lewis Funeral Home with a Scripture Vigil and Rosary at 6:30 PM with presents by the South Dakota Nurses Honor Guard. Mass of Christian Burial will be Tuesday, November 4, 10:00 AM at the Cathedral of St. Joseph with burial to follow at St. Michael Cemetery.