A Legacy Built on Principle with Harvey Jewett

Harvey Jewett grew up in Aberdeen, South Dakota, in circumstances that asked a lot of a young boy. His parents were divorced, and his father traveled frequently for work. For stretches at a time, Harvey was largely on his own, getting himself to school, taking care of himself, and figuring things out as they came.

Looking back, he calls it independence. And it became one of the defining qualities of his life.

"At my father’s behest, in his own way, he was a part of forming my independence at a young age."

His father also encouraged Harvey to attend the same college preparatory school he had attended, a Jesuit institution that would leave a lasting mark. Harvey had not been a standout student in the Aberdeen school system, but that changed quickly once he arrived.

The school’s faculty were Jesuit priests, each holding a doctorate, each shaped by a philosophy that Harvey describes simply as beautiful. It was a philosophy of brotherhood, inclusion, responsibility, and love of neighbor. The curriculum wove together moral and ethical thought across traditions and faiths, less a religious course than a serious study of how to live and who to be.

"Whose responsibility is it? It's yours," Harvey said of what the school instilled. "That was it."

From Law to the Open Road

Harvey knew from an early age that he wanted to practice law. He reminisced about writing his future goal to be a lawyer in his freshman yearbook. Harvey followed through with that commitment, eventually finding in law school exactly what he had hoped for: a rigorous intellectual life.

"I love the intellectual exercise of law," he said. "How everything is connected. It's all about how we make life livable."

But life had a few unexpected turns in store. A client walked through the door with a simple idea that Harvey immediately recognized as something more. Two men wanted to build a motel comparable in quality to a Holiday Inn, but strip away the restaurant, the bar, the pool, and all the frills. The goal was to offer travelers a clean, well-equipped room at half the price.

That client became Super 8 Motels.

"There was nobody in that niche but Super 8, and they knew it," Harvey said.

He saw the potential too, and soon became the chief lawyer for the company.

The growth that followed was swift enough that the company lost track of its own milestones. When they were approaching their hundredth motel, no one was entirely sure which one it actually was.

"It was about 104," Harvey admitted with a laugh. "We just called it the hundredth to celebrate."

What drove that growth was not just a good idea. It was a set of principles Harvey applied with conviction. Employees were treated well and supported even when they chose to move on. Franchisees were given clarity on expectations, given real ownership over their work, and held accountable when those expectations were not met.

Respect. Clarity. Follow-through. Those were the pillars.

"We let them live the job," Harvey said of the people who worked with him. "We let them exercise ownership over that job. And it makes a big difference when you trust people to take ownership."

Answering the Call for Education

Harvey's next chapter began with a phone call he did not expect and could not refuse. He was on a golf course in Palm Springs when Governor Bill Janklow reached out to him and told him, calmly and directly, that he had just appointed Harvey to the South Dakota Board of Regents and had already made it public.

"I hope you didn't," Harvey told him. "Because I don't have time."

Harvey humbly took the position after his initial hesitancy and served on the Board of Regents for more than two decades, eventually serving as president for a decade of that time.

When he first returned to South Dakota to take up the role, he drove to each of the state's colleges to see what he was working with. The picture was not encouraging.

"The schools pretty much looked the same as they did in 1970," he said. "They had not been taken care of."

Enrollment was lagging. South Dakota was retaining roughly half of the students who graduated from its own high schools. This was unacceptable to Harvey and he and his fellow regents got to work. They renovated dormitories and student unions, the two places, as Harvey put it, that students actually want to see. They brought in new leadership,  overhauled curriculum to align with the fields of study that lead to the highest-paying careers after graduation, and through it all saw enrollment improve.

By the time their work was done, the six state universities had seen more than $1.3 billion in capital improvements. Only $20 million of that came from state funds. The rest was raised from individuals, corporations, and students themselves.

"Enrollment started to go up, and teachers were paid better wages," Harvey said. "And I’m proud of that."

A Mosaic Worth Honoring

When Harvey was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2005, his first reaction was one of surprise and some hesitancy about whether he deserved it or not. He shared with a laugh that some of his lifelong friends gave him more than a little grief about the induction.

But once the dust settled, the honor settled in, too. Harvey came to see it as something genuinely meaningful, not as personal recognition but as something larger than himself.

"I think it is important for a profession, or a company, to recognize excellence," he said. "It's part of the glue that holds things together."

He sees the Hall of Fame the same way. A mosaic. A collection of different lives, different fields, different contributions, all adding up to something that defines what South Dakota is and what it can be.

"I felt honored to be a little piece of that."

Harvey Jewett spent his life building things: a legal practice, a national brand, a stronger university system, and a set of principles that ran through all of it. He did it with intellectual rigor, personal accountability, and a steady respect for the people around him.

Watch the full interview with Harvey Jewett below to hear his story in his own words.