After a battle with cancer, Dr. April Brooks passed away on April 14th, 2015, at the United Living Community in Brookings, SD. Funeral services will be 10:30 a.m. Friday, April 17, 2015, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Brookings. Visitations will be 5-7 p.m. on Thursday at Eidsness Funeral Home. April Ahlers Brooks was born on April 2, 1944 in Mineola, New York, the daughter of Martin Frederick Ahlers and Blanche Caroline Chase. She had one older sister, Joyce Caroline Chase. As a child, she lived near the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt home in Hyde Park. April sold Girl Scout cookies to Eleanor and Eleanor sometimes stopped to buy lemonade at April and Joyce's lemonade stand. April attended the New Hyde Park Memorial High School and then Hunter College, where she majored in history and anthropology, graduating in 1966. She received a full scholarship to attend Tulane University in New Orleans, where she received her M.A. (1968) and Ph.D. (1974) degrees in History. Her favorite memory of New Orleans was living in the Garden District while she taught at a local community college. She married Thomas Brooks in 1980 and moved to Houston, TX, where her son Sean was born in 1982. In 1993, April accepted a position as an assistant professor of History at South Dakota State University in Brookings, where she earned tenure and promotions to associate and full professor of history. From 2001-2009, she also served as Coordinator of Women's Studies, where she was responsible for curriculum and chairing the Women's Studies Advisory Committee. She instituted the annual Women of Distinction Awards to recognize women leaders at SDSU. She was honored by her peers with this award herself in 2011. From 2008-2014, she was Head of the newly formed Department of History, Political Science, Philosophy and Religion, where she was instrumental in guiding new faculty, reshaping the curriculum, and mentoring countless students. A consummate teacher, her friends liked to tease her that they could not go anywhere with her in South Dakota without former students coming up and telling her how she had impacted their lives. For several years, she was a reader for Advanced Placement Tests in English History. She taught her final class in English Renaissance History, her specialty, in Fall semester of 2014. At the time of her death, she was Assistant to the Dean for Experiential Learning. She was also a member of Master Gardeners and St. Paul's Episcopal Church, where she was a lay minister. An insatiable scholar and traveler, she received Fulbright-Hayes awards to travel and study in India and the Netherlands. She also received a Fulbright to study at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. Twice she was awarded an SDSU grant to study at the University of Oxford, England and has conducted research at the British Library in London. She attended an academic seminar in Istanbul, Turkey in 2013. She participated in SDSU faculty exchanges at sister institutions in England, Scotland, Egypt, China, and South Korea. April is survived by her son Sean and his family, of Chicago.