It seems like almost yesterday that a young lady from Tilsit, Missouri graduated from Jackson High School and enrolled as a student at Southeast Missouri State University. The year was 2005, and Ms. Hallie Fieser, who grew up in a 100-year old farm house in the rural community of Tilsit, was a shy, reserved individual. She enrolled at Southeast because it was close to home, was comparatively inexpensive, and offered a degree in Historic Preservation.

From the time she enrolled at Southeast, Ms. Fieser was a serious and dedicated student. Within four short years she became less reserved, supremely confident in her abilities, and poised both as a professional and as an individual. She became a supreme example of how a university education can help a person mature and grow.

One of Ms. Fieser’s projects in Historic Preservation was to study the development of the metal store fronts developed by the Mesker brothers of Evansville, Indiana and St. Louis, Missouri. In the process she became one of the most knowledgeable individuals in the nation on this topic.

In the summer of 2008 she completed an internship at the National Park Service in Omaha, Nebraska. There she worked closely with prominent architectural historians, architects, and landscape historians.

Ms. Fieser’s greatest achievement was the publication in the 2009 National Park Service newsletter entitled At the Forefront of Storefronts, a history of her beloved metal storefronts. Her work has been distributed throughout the National Park Service, adding to the many honors, prizes, and awards she earned since she enrolled as a beginning college freshman in the fall of 2005.

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