South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem Father Accident and Death Details, All About Her
Kristi Noem’s father Ron Arnold died in a farm machinery accident on his farm in Hamlin in 1994. Kristi discusses her father’s untimely passing on his Hamlin farm.
Noem was 21 years old and nearing the due date for her husband Bryon and her first baby when he heard the sad news of her father.
At that moment, Kristi got a call saying, “Your dad is caught in a grain bin.”
When she took over running the family business at the age of 22, she discovered a tape recorder in his van that gave her the information she needed.
When she arrived at the farm, neighbors and friends had taken payloaders and ripped down the grain bin in search of her father. Kristi and her family followed the ambulance to the hospital, where doctors fought for hours to save him. Nothing was working and that night, she lost her father.
Rep. Kristi Noem of South Dakota has argued frequently during her political career that the federal estate tax is so onerous that her family had to go into debt for ten years simply to pay the levy after her father passed away in a farming accident.
According to documents obtained from Hamlin County’s clerk of courts, after her father died in 1994, Noem’s mother received a life insurance payout large enough to pay the estate tax bill several times over.
Although Noem, who is currently campaigning for governor of South Dakota, has described the fee as a heavy burden, she has never referenced the insurance since taking office during the Tea Party wave of 2010, nor has she disclosed how much it costs.
