Parades Past and Future…
As the date draws nearer for camp to start this summer, I know that I — and my nearly 3-year-old son, if he only knew it! — am looking forward to Sunday afternoon parades starting….as well as Saturday night Council Fires, seeing the Ledbetter out on the water more often, the Moonlight Serenade, the sailboats on the lake each afternoon…Culver in the summer!
Presented here is an early 1960s postcard from the collection of Pete Trone, who himself was involved in Culver Summer Camps for years, has some great stories, and is one of our great local resources as a fount of historical knowledge. As always, click to enlarge the image. The Woodcraft camp, of course, had not long been re-created on the east side of SR 117 (East Shore Drive), where today it remains, and the cabins in this photo look new and shiny to me!
Browsing around our Summer Camp photos to find this one, another one caught my attention, relating also to the Black Horse Troop, or at least to horsemanship, so I’m throwing it in here. I don’t know the specific origin of this photo, but it comes from the collection of beloved, longtime Culver barber (retired) Verl Shaffer, and depicts a very early scene of the “rougher, tougher” days of Troop, when campers marched all day at times, camped in the field at night, carried canons by horseback, etc., etc. It would be interesting to know exactly where they’re riding in this picture, and exactly when, but I found this an interesting photo…
Had a happy moment just today when Culver resident Sandra Wakefield (who is also head of our Friends of the Library organization) dropped off a bag of old Academy Roll Call yearbooks from the 1950s. To be exact, 1953, 54, 56, 57, and 58! I realize these are winter school books, but they were so beautifully photographed and give such a good peek into the students and campus of the day, they’re wonderful to see. They’re also a real treasure, from my point of view, as I know they’re collectable and rare. We MIGHT own one or two earlier Roll Call’s in our history collection, but they don’t tend to come our way very often, so this is great. Sandy’s husband, Rudy, worked for years for the Culver Press (located then in what is today’s Town Hall building on Plymouth Sreet in Culver), which did much of the Academy’s printing in those days, so occasionally we get some nice donations to our collection from Sandy and Rudy.
The point is: there are some old Roll Calls in addition to other neat Culver history items (like Summer School catalogs and the like) here at the library, and any of you who are in Culver this summer (or any time!) are welcome and encouraged to drop by and spend some time in our history area browsing the collection. You’re free to bring a scanner or digital camera, too, if you’d like to digitize a favorite image or two.
Incidentally, I’ll be doing a presentation here at the library this month on Culver history: “Daniel McDonald, the Railroad, and the Origins of Culver as We Know It” on Saturday, June 24 at 10am for the Antiquarian and Historical Society of Culver’s annual meeting. The meeting and my talk — which includes a Power Point full of photos — is open to everyone, and there should be coffee and refreshments. So drop by and take a listen, come up and say hi, have some coffee and relax! And hey, think about siging up as a member of the Antiquarian Society…they’re a great group that does a lot of good relating to Culver history…
Posted by jkenney at 9:44 AM
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