BROOKINGS — After 23 years at South Dakota State University and bringing the shining sound of song to her students –– and to her church and community – Laura Diddle , director of choral activities, is retiring. And she’s going out as she came in – with song and music.
As director, Diddle has two choirs under her umbrella:
• The 120-member Choralia Women’s Chorus, almost exclusively non-music majors.
• The Concert Choir, comprised of men and women.
Her farewell concert will be April 25, with the Spring Festival of Music for all three choirs; on April 30, she participates in the Celebration of Philanthropy with the University Foundation and Alumni musical presentation; on May 8 she is serving as the honorary marshal for the 2026 SDSU graduation ceremony; and then comes May 21, the final day of her contract with the state of South Dakota.
Diddle came to SDSU in 2003, almost exclusively to conduct the women’s choir. Along with that came teaching a lot of voice lessons. Those lessons reaped benefits for many of her students. “I have students singing all over the world, professional singers,” she said. Then in 2012, she took her present post as director of choral activities.
Diddle was born in the Blue Ridge Mountains in east Tennessee in 1962. Her father worked for the Caterpillar Tractor Co. When she was 3 years old, the family moved to Toronto, Canada. She lived there until she was 12 years old. Then her father was relocated to the company’s national headquarters in Peoria, Ill. She graduated from junior high school and high school in the small town of Metamora, right outside of Peoria.
Always responded to music
“I knew of my love for music when I was a very small child,” the director noted. “It was just always a part of me. It wasn’t because my family was especially musical. I just always responded to music.” She added that as a child she had very poor eyesight. “So, music and sound meant so much to me.”
In Toronto, she was given the opportunity to sing and play musical instruments. However, she responded most to singing and “I was recognized as a singer in junior high and in high school.”
Her father was somewhat questioning about what she might do with a music degree. However, with her decision made to pursue it as a career, he wanted to ensure that she got into one of the best schools of music in the country.
“So, I did,” Diddle said, smiling and laughing lightly. “I went to Indiana University (Bloomington), which was one of the top musical schools in the country –– and it still is.”
She took her undergraduate degree in voice performance, singing and opera. She taught music at a public school in Greensburg, Indiana, for about five years before earning a master’s degree in music teaching at Indiana University.
A mentor told her she should be teaching at the college level. She was told, “In order to do that, there’s one piece of the puzzle that’s missing and that’s kindergarten through third grade. You need to teach a couple of years on that level, so you’ll have experience at all levels.” Next came two years at Batesville, Indiana.
Then a position became available at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee. Diddle applied and got the job. With her came daughter Julianna, who was going into kindergarten. She taught there for 4 1/2 years. “I kind of went home,” Diddle said. “I was so excited to go back there. A small, liberal arts college.”
Laura Diddle, Ph.D.
Receiving good advice from superiors in the discipline of music education, Diddle was now recognizing that if she wanted to teach at a large university that had a superior music program, she would need a doctorate.
Her choice for a Ph.D. in music education was at the University of South Carolina (Columbia). For her thesis, she wrote a book: “The Repertoire Selection Practices of Novice Music Educators.” With a touch of humor, Diddle said, “That’s a pretty big title, which means, ‘How in the world do new music teachers pick music for their choir?’”
The university allowed Diddle to maintain her job at Cumberland and do her coursework in the summer. And she needed to be away from Cumberland to do her residency requirement. Professors at USC urged her to go to a “little bit bigger school.” She applied to several schools, one of them being SDSU.
She came in 2003 and never left. For part of her interview with the late Dr. Charles Caanan, she conducted the women’s choir. He told her that “her rapport with the women got you the job.”
Diddle came to SDSU to teach voice, because she had an undergraduate degree in voice performance. She teaches music education classes, noting that she teaches as many non-music majors as she does music majors.
And under direction, the women’s choir “just took off. It was a choir of about 45 women; since I’ve been here it’s not been less than 100 women. I just adore them. … I’ve been with them since 2003.”
Love of her life seals the deal
Diddle admits that she came to SDSU not knowing anything about South Dakota and considered staying for about three years –– and then moving on to a bigger gig. And then?
“I met the love of my life: Brian Hildebrant,” she said. “The rest is history, as they say. He and I got married in December 2005. That sealed the deal for me to stay here.”
Meanwhile, Diddle was doing things in a big way. “I don’t really know how to do things on a small level,” she admitted. “One thing I insisted on doing was auditioning my women’s choir to go to a big regional conference. And they got accepted.”
Add to that her becoming president of the University Faculty Senate and starting an Elementary Honors Choir, which is still going strong. And come 2012, when she became director of choral activities, she insisted on touring with the Concert Choir. First came regional tours in the Midwest area; to follow would be national tours and, finally, international tours. Nations visited included Bavaria, Russia, Spain, Italy, Sweden and Norway.
Early on, the students paid for their tours. For Sweden and Norway, the SDSU Foundation paid for much of the trip for the students. Diddle called that “gracious, a marvelous gift.”
“Once every four years, we need to go somewhere. So, we do.”
Travels, at home in Brookings, ‘snowbirds’ in Mexico
In retirement, Diddle puts “more travel with my husband” high on her to-do list: “Brian and I love travel, not only in the United States but also overseas, because we’ve spent so much time overseas. We really love to go to Italy and Spain; we’re planning to go to Portugal. We have other places we’d really like to go to. We haven’t been to the East; we’d love to go to the Orient; we haven’t seen that yet.”
She is also looking forward to “a wonderful new role” as a grandmother. Her daughter, Juliana, is having a baby in July. She and her husband have a “blended, beautiful family” She explained, “When Brian and I got married in 2005, I adopted two of his (three) children. I consider myself having four children.”
Among her off-campus musical endeavors are serving as the choir director at St. Thomas More Catholic Church, a role she held prior to becoming a Catholic.
“I came into the Catholic Church after I met Brian,” Diddle explained, noting that her husband is a “cradle Catholic. He has been involved in the church since birth and he’s 67 in July. We made a firm decision that we wanted our whole family to go to one church. I was an Episcopalian.”
The couple have a home and will live in Brookings, but they also have a home in Cabo, Mexico, and will “snowbird” to there when winter hits home here.
And a legacy for Laura Diddle as she leaves SDSU? “Things keep moving forward. We don’t live in the rearview mirror. I think my legacy is the love I have had for the students and how I have encouraged them at every opportunity to share their gifts with me. … I’m always telling my students: let your light shine. Use your gift, use your voice the music you have been given and let it shine forth.”
— Contact John Kubal at [email protected].
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