| Blog Post Published on: | 26th October 2022 |
| Title: | Early Memories of Circle Pines Center |
| Lead Author: | Jerry Gordon |
| Type of Blog Post: | cpc_history |
I first arrived at Chief Noonday Camp in 1938.
It was a long time ago, and my memories are pretty sketchy, but for whatever it is worth, here goes: I was 4 years old in 1938 when my parents Jack and Bessie (later known as Bacia) Gordon brought my brother, Billy, and me to Circle Pines for the first time. Our parents came to this new family camp for a week-long seminar on consumer cooperatives. They were members of the South Shore Co-op in Chicago. Billy and I spent the time swimming in the mud-bottomed lake and playing in the woods of Chief Noonday Camp, a CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) camp in the Yankee Springs Recreational Area that was rented for the summer. There was folk dancing with Naomi Rawn (now Greenfield) and arts and crafts with Dorthy Sonquist. The next summer we spend two weeks and the summer after that, a month. After that I spent the whole summer there, as a camper or on staff, almost every year until I went to college. My father was elected to the Board of Directors and remained a board member until he died in 1947.
It soon became clear that renting Chief Noonday each summer would not be a viable way to develop the institution we wanted as Circle Pines, so the Board began to look for a permanent site in the area. They discovered Stewart farm, a Civil War era farmstead about 7 miles from Chief Noonday, with a large farmhouse, three barns, a tenant farmer’s house and 284 acres of eroded, submarginal farm land, including a 100 acre woodlot and a third of the shoreline of spring-fed Stewart Lake.
They bought it in January 1940 from the remaining members of the Stewart family and arranged for Quaker work camps (under the direction of Bob Wildman) to spend 2 summers to rehabilitate the site, install plumbing and electrical wiring in the Farmhouse, pull down the most dilapidated barn before it fell on someone, and build a large cabin that would become the old Youth Lodge, on the hill overlooking the beach.
Another barn was remodeled into Swallows Lodge. Swallows got the name because of all the swallows living in the building when we arrived. The shop area in the basement of Swallows had been a chicken coop for many years. There was so much manure on the floor we didn’t know it had a concrete floor until we tried to dig a foundation to put one in.
In 1940, while the Family Camp was still operating at Chief Noonday, my family lived in a big tent on the hill overlooking the beach at the new Circle Pines. My father commuted from Chicago, spending weekends with us. I remember worrying my mother half to death when my friend (possibly Paul Sutherland who was later a principal dancer with the Joffrey Ballet) and I, (all of 6 years old) took a boat, rowed it across the lake and took our time returning. I couldn’t understand why my Mom was so mad! I remember getting up early in the morning, winding a tower around my head to keep the mosquitoes off, and going out with Mom to pick black rasberries for breakfast.
In 1941 Circle Pines inaugurated the Youth Work Camp (modeled on the Quaker Work Camp) for high-school age kids, and the Children’s Camp for us younger kids, to keep us busy and out of trouble while the adults had their meetings. My mother was the first Children’s Camp counselor. Later, after my father died, she led Art Workshops during summer camp for many years. Many of her students (Henry Fomby, Alma Mathews, Bernhard Chomer, to name a few) came back year after year to participate in her workshops. The murals on the walls of the Acorn dining room in the Farmhouse give testimony to the creativity of ther students in those workshops.
In those first few years, one of our major workbee activities in the late fall and early spring was planting evergreen seedlings on the eroded fields of the old farm. Tens of thousands of seedlings, about 6 inches tall, were planted in slits dug into the barren soil. Those seedlings are now 50 feet tall pine forests enveloping the land, allowing it to recover its fertility and health. And every one of those trees is mine as a member of the cooperative.
I remember walking out into the woods with my father, Dave Sonquist and Bill Knox one winter’s day in the early-to-mid 40’s, when they selected and cut down the big oak tree that would become the massive beam that supports the ceiling at the west end of the dining room in the Farmhouse. As they went at that tree with a two-man crosscut saw, my father and Dave (neither of them small me) spelled each other on one end of the saw while Bill Knox just kept pulling away on the other end until the tree came down.
Bill Knox was an impressive man, and expert on cooperatives, Esperanto, astronomy, carpentry, masonry. He had been a school principal in South Dakota before coming to Circle Pines. He was the Circle Pines version of “Renaissance man”. His son and daughter, Dwight and Sybil, lived there with him for a few years. Dave Sonquist was the charismatic leader of the organization from its founding in 1938. I remember himm most clearly leading the singing from the green Circle Pines song books as we sat on benches in the Farmhouse – “On the Road to Mandalay,” “Korobushka,” “Kookaburra” – songs from all over the world led by his strong baritone voice from the piano.
I remember a membership meeting in that same time period, when Pipp Bauman was trying to raise money to pay off the mortgage on the land. He was like a revival preacher that day, exhorting the faithful to come up with a little more money so we could burn the mortgage. We held a mortgage burning ceremony when he was done.
I was too young to be a member of that first Youth group in the mid-40’s – and I always resented that. My brother, Bill, was a member along with Dan and Fran Dugan (Sheila was my age), Eddie Edwards (Bruce was older), Mick McMakin, Liz Schroeder, the Arelanders, Eddie Keith (John S. and Hanne D were later married), Ken Champney, and others whose names slip my memory now.
Bill, Fran, Eddie and some of the others stayed at camp over the winter of 1944 and went to Middleville High School as part of Dave’s effort to start a Folk School on the Danish model at Circle Pines. It lasted only two years. Bernard Keith was the Youth group’s de facto leader. I remember fall workbees when the work project was collecting firewood for the winter. A buzz saw with a big rotary blade was attached to the tractor with a wide power take-off belt and Bernard cut up the wood while the Youthies brought it to the Farmhouse and piled it in the basement near the big old furnace. Bernard met Bill Knox’s daughter, Sybil, at Circle Pines and they were married there a few years later.
One of the early work projects was building cabins – five in the Orchard for adults and families, five more for the Children’s camp behind the tenant farmer’s house (later dubbed the Manager’s Mansion when Don and Lore Rasmussen lived there and then just the Mansion). The Orchard cabins were built from oak cut in our woods. The problem with oak is that it’s extremely hard wood – so hard it’s difficult to drive a nail without bending it. (A couple of tricks from Bill Knox – rub soap on the nail and it will go through the board more easily, or drill a hole through the first board to give yourself a headstart.) After World War II ended, war surplus pre-fab cabins were on the market. We bought and erected several – two in the Orchard, one behind the Mansion, one or two in what is now known as Acorns unit, but was known as Children’s camp then.
Governance of Circle Pines has never been easy. There has been controversy for as long as I can remember. One of the earliest issues was whether to retain the Family Camp mode of the Chief Noonday days, where constituent groups (i.e. local co-ops) would be members, and each constituent group would reserve space and send its people to use that space throughout the season; or whether we would have only individual members and organize unit camps on an age-identified basis. This issue actually caused a schism, with the Dearborn Area Co-operative Camping Association (DACCA) splitting off and buying first one cabin and then a second on Lake Stewart, which they use to this day after we finally decided to have individual members.
Another split actually resulted in two Boards of Directors claiming to be the legitimate Board at the same time. This arose over the issue of elections for the Board by mail ballot. There was some question as to whether the By-laws amendment authorizing mail ballots was properly approved. As a result, a mail election for Board members was held, but the results were not recognized by the sitting Board (of which my father was a member). You can imagine the confusion and acrimony.
Another early issue was where to build — around the Farmhouse where we already had a base of operations, or down by the lake where the Frank Lloyd Wright plans later laid out the campsite. Somewhere in the woods, if you look closely, you can find the foundations of a cabin that was intended to be the beginning of the lakeside camp site. And, of course, there are the forlorn walls of the beach bathouse, built by the youth, but never roofed, never used.
Part of that argument was whether and where to build the Rec Hall. I remember my father saying, after one particularly heated board meeting, that he didn’t care if they built it on the moon, but that we needed the facility. But he did care. He was a partisan for the “build it near the Farmhouse” school.
It was finally built after he died, about where he wanted it to be. It took us several years – almost 10 – from the summer the Junior Camp started pouring concrete for the pillar bases as their work project, until the salvaged trusses from the Hastings Opera House were placed on top of the pillars and the roof was built. The fireplace came later yet.
My father, Bernard Keith, and Pipp Bauman were strong supporters of Dave Sonquist. Dave was forced out as Director of Circle Pines in 1949, two years after Dad died. Isadore Solomon took over as interim Summer Camp Director on short notice. After Isadore, Jane Reed was Director for 3 or 4 years, then Don and Lore Rasmussen came from Talladega College in Mississippi to direct the camp through the end of the 50s.
Through the 40’s and early 50’s we had a functioning farm with crops and animals. Loyal Hoyt was in charge of the farming operation through most of the 40’s. After World War II we sponsored a couple of DP (Displaced Persons) families from Latvia to live at Circle Pines and help farm the land. First was the Kinens family. When they moved on, we brought over the Kalnins family. Simon Black took over as farm manager in about 1949. Haying was a major summer work project in the early 50’s. We would fill the upper barn with bales of hay up to the roof. Getting it up there was no small feat! Then we built a huge pile of bales out in fron of the barn. The hay would feed our herd of dairy cows over the winter. Don Graham was on farm staff with me for at least one of those summers.
Article by Jerry Gordon in the Circle Pines Center 60th Anthology (1998)
pages 14 through 17
Editor’s Note: I’ve taken the liberty of adding subtitles.