Camp Lady of the Lake revisited |
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Written by LAURIE STEVENS BERTKE, Chronicle Writer
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Monday, 28 June 2010 12:45 |
In our May 23, 2010, issue of the Catholic Chronicle, we ran an article about Camp Lady of the Lake and Camp Navarre, two summer camps that once served orphans and underprivileged youth from the Diocese of Toledo.
Campers are pictured at the entrance to Camp Lady of the Lake in Luna Pier, Mich., in 1941. (Diocesan archives)
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Soon after the story ran, I received a telephone call from Michael Kane, a parishioner of Bowling Green St. Thomas More who spent four summers at Camp Lady of the Lake while he was living at St. Anthony’s Villa as a child. Mr. Kane and his former housemother, Tiffin Franciscan Sister Beatrice Herman, fondly remember their time spent at the camp and were eager to share some of their memories.
“I loved going to camp,” said Sr. Herman. “For me, it was like a break from the schedule of the orphanage.”
Now 86, Sr. Herman — known to most her friends as “Sr. Bea” — worked at St. Anthony’s Villa from 1959-1970, first as the housemother of 32 boys ages 10 to 14 and later as administrator of the orphanage.
“I came and had all these boys and it was really quite a shock,” recalled Sr. Herman, who had previously served as a teacher and principal in Blakeslee. Her assignment was only supposed to last three months, but her superior asked her to stay on at the end of the summer of 1959.
“I started crying and I said, ‘They don’t obey me,’ ” Sr. Herman recalled. “And she said, ‘Remember, this is a home, not a classroom.’ And that was what struck me — that changed my whole attitude.”
Tiffin Franciscan Sister Jane Schmenk sells treats at the “snack shack” that was located at Camp Lady of the Lake in 1957. (Diocesan archives)
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As soon as school let out each year, the residents of St. Anthony’s Villa would head to Camp Lady of the Lake for the summer.
“We had a great time out there,” said Mr. Kane, who lived at St. Anthony from 1957-1960. “At the camp we had archery, BB guns, nature hikes, swimming twice a day in the lake, fishing, canoeing … we had bonfires every Friday where we’d get up and do little skits and everybody would vote on it. We had arts and crafts, we had a candy shack.”
The camp on Lake Erie had separate beaches for the boys and girls, as well as a private beach for the sisters.
Sr. Herman remembered how another sister once lost her new dentures while she was swimming in the lake. “And I dived under and found them in all that muck,” she laughed. “And she took it and she rinsed it off and stuck it back in her mouth.”
According to Sr. Herman, the sisters enjoyed their summers at the camp as much as the children. “We all had a loyalty to the camp,” said Sr. Herman. “Because a lot of sisters came out there in the summertime and worked.”
Campers prayed the rosary every evening at this Marian grotto on the grounds of Camp Lady of the Lake. (Diocesan archives)
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They were assisted by a camp staff of young adults, including seminarians from the diocese who served as counselors for the boys. “It was wonderful for them, because they could relate then to these male figures,” said Sr. Herman.
Each week the campers were also assigned different jobs, from helping in the kitchen to cleaning up after the sheep that were kept on the property.
“We switched up the jobs so nobody got an easy one and nobody got a hard one all the time,” said Mr. Kane.
Campers prayed the rosary every evening at the Marian grotto on the grounds, and Mass was celebrated daily in a small chapel attached to the mess hall.
“The chapel was a little chapel that had folding doors, and for Mass they’d put those doors up and we’d all sit in the mess hall for the Mass,” explained Sr. Herman.
Mass was celebrated daily in a small chapel attached to the mess hall at Camp Lady of the Lake. (Diocesan archives)
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The hall was a center for all functions at camp, from church to meals to plays to dances. Movies were shown once a week, and every day began and ended with a flag-raising and flag-lowering ceremony.
Mr. Kane also described the late Tiffin Franciscan Sister Henrietta Terbrach trying to teach him how to box. He said the older nun took off her glasses and put on a pair of boxing gloves, and he threw a punch that knocked her habit off her head.
He chuckled recalling how Msgr. Michael J. Doyle, the director of Catholic Charities, walked in on the incident. “He was really cool about it; he says, ‘Everything under control Henri?’ ”
“Yep, teaching him self-defense,” was her reply, Mr. Kane said.
He remembered the older nun fondly. One thing she often said to the boys that stuck with him was, “I’ll treat you like men when you act like men.”
Sr. Herman and Mr. Kane were both at Camp Lady of the Lake the summer when about 100 Cuban children arrived through Operation Pedro Pan, a program sponsored by Catholic Charities of Miami. Between 1960 and 1962, the program brought more than 14,000 Cuban children to the U.S. and placed them in the care of Catholic Charities agencies around the country.
Camp Lady of the Lake had separate beaches for the boys, girls and religious sisters who resided there each summer. (Diocesan archives)
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Sr. Herman has kept in touch over the years with some of those children and with many others she cared for at St. Anthony’s Villa, including Mr. Kane, who lived at the orphanage until he was 14 years old.
Most children at the Villa were not true orphans, but simply came from troubled homes. “We’d keep them, but still their deep yearning was to be with their family,” said Sr. Herman.
“We always wanted to go home,” agreed Mr. Kane.
“That’s the best place you could have been, though,” he said of the camp. “I didn’t meet anybody up there that didn’t want to be there, once they got there. Not one time in the four years I was there. We looked forward to it.”
Not much remains today of Camp Lady of the Lake. Since it closed in 1969, much of the property has eroded into the lake and the rest is now marshland. Among the few markers that remain, according to Sr. Herman and Mr. Kane, are several concrete posts with the trademark “LL” engraved into their sides.
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Last Updated on Monday, 28 June 2010 13:06 |
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Middle School Rally
Click the image above to watch a video about the first Diocese of Toledo Middle School Rally March 24.
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