Leaving Community Better Than He Found It with Dan Kirby
Dan Kirby quietly became one of Sioux Falls' most influential civic leaders, believing that he should leave the place he calls home “a little better than he found it.” The 2021 South Dakota Hall of Fame Inductee grew up one of five boys in a modest household.
He was, as he puts it, the first of the baby boomers. And from the very beginning, he was paying attention. The classic Boy Scout tenets: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent, still resonate with Dan today.
"I think if you get half of those right, most of the time you're going to do well in life," Dan said, reflecting on the oath he memorized as a young man at Saint Mary's grade school. It was a foundation that would carry him through seven decades of business, community service, and quiet generosity.
Roots on the Prairie
Dan came home from McKinnon Hospital to a humble two-room apartment. His family eventually made their way to central Sioux Falls, then the west side of town, and somewhere along the way, a young Dan Kirby picked up a set of golf clubs and started caddying at Minnehaha Country Club.
It was there, listening to the conversations of men who had come home from the war and set about building a city, that something took root in him.
"I got to meet and watch and listen to the South Dakota version of Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation," he recalled. "These were the guys who came back and built businesses and built Sioux Falls."
After graduating from Washington High School as part of its largest-ever class, Dan went west to Stanford, then across the bay to UC Berkeley for law school. It was during those California years that a blind date arranged through his fraternity introduced him to Arlene Wagner, a Sacramento native whose family had deep ties to Wagner, South Dakota. They married in 1971 and eventually found their way back to where it all began.
Carrying a Family Legacy Forward
Returning to Sioux Falls meant joining Western Surety Company, a fourth-generation family business founded in 1900 by his great-grandfather, Joe Kirby, himself a South Dakota Hall of Fame Inductee from the Class of 1993. Dan served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel, eventually navigating one of the most complex chapters in the company's history: buying out 124 shareholders, most of them extended family members with no role in daily operations. It was a task that required patience, precision, and the kind of trust that can only be built over time.
"It was a win-win for all," he said of the process. "It took two years and a lot of lawyers to convince everybody of that."
The company was eventually sold to CNA for $100 million. Dan stayed on through the company's centennial year in 2000 before stepping away.
The Pavilion Project
If there is one chapter that most people associate with Dan Kirby's legacy in Sioux Falls, it is the Washington Pavilion of Arts and Sciences.
It began, as so many great things do, with a small ask that grew into something much larger.
"I was walking innocently out of my downtown Rotary meeting in August of 1990," Dan recalled with a laugh, "when I was met at the door by the mayor and superintendent of schools, who said they had a little job for me. Maybe two or three months."
Fifteen months later, after early-morning meetings and a quarter of a million dollars in engineering and acoustical studies, Dan's committee delivered its answer: yes, the old quartzite Washington High School building could be transformed into a world-class performing arts center.
What followed was a decade of work. Dan chaired the election campaign, led the capital campaign, raising $13.5 million in private dollars without touching property tax funds, served on construction committees, and then on the management board that helped the facility find its footing. Dan and Arlene also made the largest leading gift.
When the Washington Pavilion opened in 1999, it did so with the New York Philharmonic. Yo-Yo Ma followed shortly after. Musicians from both performances remarked that the hall ranked among the finest acoustics they had ever experienced anywhere in the world.
When asked if the Washington Pavilion stands as his proudest community accomplishment, Dan didn't hesitate. "Oh, sure," he said. "It absolutely does."
Giving It Away
Giving back was never separate from the work of building a life. He and Arlene have structured their estate around endowment funds, directed to organizations they believe will be doing meaningful work in Sioux Falls and across South Dakota long after they are gone. United Way. Boys and Girls Club. The usual suspects, as he calls them, who take care of the greatest needs most efficiently.
"You can't take it with you," he said simply. "And the psychology library walls are lined with books that say, if you give your kids too much money, you're harming them."
He believes just as firmly in the power of philanthropy to shape a community's future, pointing to Denny Sanford's transformational impact on South Dakota as evidence of what is possible.
"The rest of us simply have to realize that this is part of tithing, if you will," he said. "And it's a worthwhile part, because look at what we've got."
When asked how he hopes to be remembered, Dan does not reach for accolades or accomplishments. He reaches back further than that.
"Probably as the oldest of the fifth generation of a family that came here with nothing and kept leaving things a little bit better when we were done."
From a family business to a culture of civic generosity, Dan Kirby has spent a lifetime doing exactly that.
Learn more about Dan Kirby's life and legacy here: https://sdexcellence.org/Dan_Kirby_2021