Dexter Iowa Community Site

Consider this quote from Abe Lincoln

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."

     It is always sad to get the news that an old friend is ill, but this past week when I learned that illness was terminal I got a little melancholy like I tend to do and started thinking about just what great memories I have.

     I was thirteen or fourteen at the time and coming from a poor farm family I couldn’t imagine the folks being able to pay to send me to church camp for an entire week. After reading through the camp booklet at church, I finally decided to try to become a counselor at a camp for exceptional needs individuals, which was to be held at the Methodist Camp on Lake Okoboji.

     I remember my first trip there and those first scary moments of camp. I had never been around anyone with Down syndrome before, let alone an entire camp filled full of people with the affliction, and I was a bit apprehensive about being there for an entire week.

     I shouldn’t have worried any as the week flew by. There were so many faces, all covered in smiles that I found my time there to be extremely rewarding. I remember the names to this day. Each cabin group created their own unique name and over the years I was a proud member of the “Ripe Tomatoes”, the “He-Men” and the “Ralph Malphs”.

     Every year on Thursday night at camp we would hold a talent competition in the Tabernacle building on campus. This huge Chautauqua type structure had an interesting charm to it, and I spent many hours sitting in that building alone with my thoughts over the years. It was in that building that I remember laughing until my sides hurt at the skits that each cabin would come up with. To this day I can still close my eyes and hear Cathy McGuire singing “Paper Roses” in a beautifully haunting way. And that old Tabernacle held a special treasure ever year when we would all take turns hog calling to determine who would be crowned the camp champion.

     Many of the faces changed over the years, but for those of us who spent time there on staff, the names will always be with us. The infamous “love beads” that kept Kurt stalking the camp directors teenage daughter; the whisper of Dan Ross and his amazing cowboy hat, to the camper with the suitcase packed with hidden packages of prunes that really weren’t necessary. Each of those stories brings a chuckle or a warm smile, or a sad fondness for those involved and that special place we called our own for one week.

     Shortly after high school I spent an entire summer on the camp staff there. I did some counseling, but spent most of the summer as the camp handy man and official lawn mower. On hot summer days I would sit in the Tabernacle eating my lunch or taking a break to catch a cool drink of water. It was also a place where I spent hours talking to my fellow staff members about life and the world outside of what each of us were comfortable with.

     It is a special place to me, and one that I always try to visit when I am up that way, even though so much of the camp has changed in the last thirty years. I walk the paths, and stop by the buildings I remember, and always make time to spend just a few moments down by the edge of the water saying “goodbye” to the lake.

     In a couple of weeks I will be making another trip up to the place that holds such fond memories for me. For my friend is very ill, and in a few weeks will be no more. I will join with others, standing and sharing my memories of that place, of the building that has stood for nearly 100 years and now has been determined to be obsolete and unneeded. I will listen as the old wooden screen doors creak on their hinges when they are opened and clap with that unmistakable sound as they are closed. I will take my place in the wooden benches looking up front towards the stage and the mural of the camp as seen from the lake in the early 1900s. I will pause briefly at the inner fire place, smack dab in the middle of the giant hall, and remember the nights of vespers and campfires held there when summer storms would roll though. I will stand and take a few pictures out by the road, trying to capture that feeling of seeing that big red building for the first time nearly forty years ago. And I will stop briefly near the back and remember a special bench where I first gave my life to God and where I went from being a child of the farm to becoming the child of Him.

     I will remember that place fondly for many years to come. I don’t know if any of the others who were with me that year will be there, and although I would love to see them again, I will stand for each of them, who took that year to become more than we ever thought ourselves capable of being. And maybe, just maybe, I will give a loud and boisterous hog call in memory of every one of those exceptional young people who touched my life.

See you next week….remember, we’re all in this together.