Hazel Dulcie Miner (April 11, 1904 – March 16, 1920) was a student at a rural Great Plains one-room school, who died while protecting her 10-year-old brother, Emmet, and 8-year-old sister, Myrdith, from the spring blizzard of 1920 in Center, North Dakota.

Hazel was the 15-year-old daughter of William Albert Miner, a farmer, and his wife, the former Blanche Steele, both originally from Riceville, Iowa.

The family had lived for a time in Staples, Minnesota but had returned to their farm in North Dakota the year before the blizzard.

[5] The Oliver County register of deeds, whose daughter had played with Hazel, recalled, "Kind of a quiet girl she was," and described her as "sort of motherly, for one so young.

[5] On March 15, 1920, the first day of the blizzard, the school dismissed its students early to enable them to go home before the storm arrived.

[7]: 124  William Miner, who was worried about the blizzard conditions, rode the two miles to the school on a saddle horse to escort his children home.

Via telephone, farm families from the surrounding countryside summoned men to join the search for the missing Miner children.

[8] Even though she was familiar with the road, Hazel quickly became disoriented due to the blinding, blowing white snow, which made it impossible to see more than a few feet in front of her.

She was dressed in warm coat, hat, gloves and sturdy, one-buckle overshoes, but the clothing was insufficient protection against the wind and freezing temperatures, and her hands and feet became numb in the cold.

[6] The children sang all four verses of "America the Beautiful," a song they had sung during opening exercises at the country school that morning, and repeated the Lord's Prayer.

[6] Her brother Emmet later recalled the blizzard for an article in the March 15, 1963 issue of The Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune: The robe kept blowing down and Hazel kept pulling it up until she got so she couldn't put it up any more.

"[5] At Hazel's funeral, the minister preached a sermon on the Christian Bible verse John 15:13: "Greater love hath no man that he lay down his life for his friend," and said, "Here and there are occasionally people who by their acts and lives endeavor to imitate Him.

On January 15, 1921, an article in The North Dakota Children's Home Finder appeared about how "this guardian angel of the prairies, covered with a thick sheet of ice, gave up her own life to save her brother and sister.

[5] Emmet and Myrdith were interviewed by various North Dakota newspapers numerous times in the years following the blizzard and many news articles were written about Hazel.

In 1952 the Ford Motor Company commissioned two paintings of scenes from the story by North Dakota artist Elmer Halvorson.

In the song, recalling Hazel's outstretched arms, Suchy sings of "wings on the snow, a fate not chose, morning finds a dove so froze."

[7] A retired Mandan, North Dakota elementary teacher, Kevin Kremer, wrote a 2019 children's book called Angel of the Prairie based on the story of Hazel Miner.

[15] A Gothic-style granite monument honoring Hazel's memory was erected in front of the Oliver County Courthouse in 1936, sixteen years after her death, by former North Dakota governor L. B.

The town of Center, North Dakota held a ceremony on that date at which Chuck Suchy sang The Story of Hazel Miner and tours were given of places significant to her life and death.