Left Culver this morning finally…took me quite some time to write my comment sheets and get the barracks squared away this year. This week I’ll be running errands from my parents house in Michigan and trying to post up retrospectives about Company Two from this last summer for people to read/hopefully enjoy.

If you have any pictures from this past summer on your digital camera or computer you can upload them to our photo gallery for people to enjoy. Lets try to get more pictures from this summer in the galleries.

Also, spread the word about the forums to people getting home from the summer. lets start getting people on here and getting some discussion going about camp and what people are up to now that they’re home.

While in Culver, check out our lighthouse! There is quite a story behind this structure, but suffice it to say that it was used, as far back as at least 1895, to signal Lake Maxinkuckee’s steamboats that a train had arrived at the station bringing hundreds of visitors to the lake for recreation in those days when people traveled here by the thousands to swim, picnic, visit friends around the lake, or visit the Academy. Roads were terrible, and train and boat travel was the norm.

The lighthouse, slowly falling into disrepair over the years, finally went down after it sustained damage in the “Big Wind” of the summer of 1913. Thanks to a photo from the CMA catalog of 1895 (provided by Academies’ archivist Bob Hartman), we now know that the original lighthouse was built well before the 1900 date we had originally believed.

 At any rate, those who have been around Culver this past winter will be familiar with the whole story: the Antiquarian and Historical Society of Culver donated a re-creation of the lighthouse to the town park in October, 2005. This was destroyed by vandals in January of 2006, which shocked the town and got a lot of local folks involved in helping re-create the re-creation! What was eventually erected in the town park, just a matter of weeks ago, was a much sturdier, finely crafted reproduction of the 1895 structure, complete with specially-made copper dome. The existing lighthouse, as photos reveal, is much larger than the original, but it’s a nice tribute to the rich history of the lake, the town, and the Academy. Stop by Culver’s town park (the public beach area) on Lake Shore Drive and take a look!

More photos — and history — of the original lighthouse here.

Also, Civil War and local (Culver-Lake Max area) history buffs may be interested in this. Ray Boomhower, author of The Pen and the Sword, a biography of Civil War General and Ben Hur author Lew Wallace, will be speaking at 10am on Saturday, July 22, at the Antiquarian and Historical Society of Culver’s July gathering at the Wurster cottage on East Shore Lane. Boomhower will also appear at the library downtown for a book signing at 1pm. Lew Wallace is said to have written the first few chapters of his blockbuster novel (most famous for the 1950s, award-winning film version with Charlton Heston) at the Allegheny house just east of Culver Academy. More on that here.  Wallace was an amazing guy…besides his Civil War and writing career, he was head of the trial of the assasination of President Lincoln, and was — among other things — a U.S. ambassador.

All are invited and both events are free, so come check it out!

A recent addition to the library’s history website:

The Culver Calendar from the 1940s ((probably the late 40s) includes a photo for each week of the year. Some — though not all — of these photos were taken by Col. Edward Payson. More of his Culver Calendar photos can be seen here.

As I write, the intrepid midshipmen of Naval 2 are preparing for their first official Personal Inspection of the summer.  From the company office I hear the smacking of shoes, the clang of broomsticks, and above all, the sound of people telling eachother what to do in order to get the barracks clean.  It’s a great sound.

Following this 8:10 PI Naval 2 will head off to their first classes of the summer, sailing, waterskiing, basketball, math, english, all sorts of things.  Then we have lunch, another inspection, more classes, and some sports time in the afternoon.

The most important news is that company 2 survived the first weekend of camp in good shape.  We’re still all present and accounted for.  This is my third summer with the unit and every time someone comes down with an unreconcilable case of the “homesick blues” and has had to go home.  Not this time though.  We’ve had a few guys show some signs of missing home but getting them involved in activities and introducing them to other guys has helped immeasurably.

Our first drill took place a few days ago, and as expected it looked rough.  It will take a few times before people get in step and figure out how to march.  Luckily, we have a few times to give before first parade Tuesday evening.  People seem willing to learn however, which is good.  And our first class is starting to wake up and realize that they are in charge. Which is very good.

We’re having another drill tonight after dinner and then our first company meeting.  At the meeting we’re mostly going to go over the basic rules of camp, but we’ll also throw in a few fun curveballs to shake things up.

It’s PI TIME!

Mr. Flora suggested this one, and I agree…it’s the complete Naval School catalog from…well, I’m not sure the exact year. Perhaps I’ve missed the date listing on it, but I couldn’t find it. It’s the 1960s, at any rate. There’s some beautiful photography in there, of course, and lots of vintage detail about the Naval School offerings of the day.

I have to thank Dr. John Houghton for the donation of this, and other Culver artifacts to the library for our collection. If you’re not familiar with John, besides being a Culver grad and former teacher at the Academy, he’s a scholar with a lengthy pedigree. Goculver.com readers will be likely to enjoy his 2005 novel, “Rough Magicke,” which is set at Culver and features TONS of Culver-pedia sorts of detail. It’s fun to read the thing and try to pick out landmarks and people we all know, but it’s all the more interesting because the actual plot is part ‘Harry Potter,’ part theological mystery thriller, and part military school fiction. You’ll want to check out his website here as well — it’s a “fake” military prep school website designed around the fictional school in his novel based on Culver…if that makes any sense!

I interviewed John (his picture’s at left) for a library event about his book last year, and asked him about the Culver connections in his novel. You can read the interview here. John also wrote a series of articles for the local newspaper, The Culver Citizen in the 1970s on Culver history, and there’s some fantastic information in there. You can read those on our website here.

I didn’t intend this post to turn into one about John, but his work is worth investigating for the “Culverite”!

Back to the Naval School catalog: you can view this catalog either as a slideshow here, or as a gallery of clickable thumbnails here. The images are kind of large, so I apologize. If you’re using dialup, you’re probably going to want to start with the thumbnail gallery so you can pick and choose your images.

If you didn’t know, that catalog comes from an ever-growing collection of complete, scanned vintage catalogs, yearbooks, booklets, and other historical publications on our website. You can browse the current offerings here…but check back, we’re adding more all the time!

(editor’s note: Go Culver.com welcomes a new voice to the blog, Mr. Jeff Kenney, the Programming and Technology Coordinator at the Culver-Union Twp. Public Library in Culver, IN. jkenney will be contributing regular blog posts drawing from the library’s resources and dropping by the forums now and again.)

Part of my job as (among other things) unofficial “archivist” at the Culver-Union Twp. Public Library has been gathering and digitizing tons of Culver-related memorabilia. Some of you have probably found your way to the library’s history site, which has thousands of images and full-text writings about Culver history, both summer and winter school, and relating to the town, the lake, etc….fun stuff!

Mr. Flora kindly invited me to become a part of the community here at goculver.com, which is a fantastic site that’s inspired me to work on making the library’s site (which I edit and maintain) more interactive. So, I’ll be posting here from time to time with the occasional old picture, anecdote, link, news item, etc. …Read the rest of this entry…

For today I bring you some truly interesting background on summer camps courtesy of the American Camp Association:

“The camp experience is a unique American tradition. With more than 140 years of history, camp as we know it today has its roots deeply planted in American soil. But while clothing, music, and pastimes have changed over the years, camp has always been a place where children could prepare to be productive and healthy adults in the context of fun and games.”

…Read the rest of this entry…

1. A reminder about the new videos available in the Super Two and Force Four forums they give a nice snapshot of summer 2005 and might get some of you excited for 2006.

2. If anyone has any of their old unit pictures and access to a scanner, let me know. We’re trying to compile unit pictures in our photo gallery.

3. Finally a fun post from the Alumni forum:

From GoCulver.com member higginbotham79, both a grad and former Tac officer of Naval 2:

“Okay I am going back a few years on this one when I was a tac officer for Co. 2. Some of you guys may remember this one:

It was homecoming weekend summer of 1982 and a company out of Chicago was filming a recruiting movie for Culver and would be filming on campus all week. Well, all of us tacs from all the companies went to the uniform shop where they were getting rid of some old army dress khakis that they used to wear for the various tac officers. We decided to get outiftted and wear them for the homecoming parade when we would be on the reviewing line grading each of the companies as they passed in review.

We were all decked out in these and we had each company commander wear “putts” or the white leggings that the midshipmen used to wear prior to 1979 when they used to march with M1 rifles. Also my brother was regimental adjutant that make and he was instructed when he was giving the daily report where you yelled out the OC and OD etc. In the old days they used to say”by order of the commandant” now it is “by order of the camp director”. The counselors involved were Brad Larson from Band, Hector Gonzalez from co 1, myself from Co 2, John Sbarbaro from co 3, mike uram from Co 4 and Stan Evans from Aviation.

So my brother does his thing with order of the commandant and there were some loud cheers from the crowd, the band steps off for pass in review and here come all the companies in putts and the tac officers all dressed out in officer uniforms on the reviewing line and Col Fred Lane who was the director of the school at that time almost had a stoke right there! Remember the film crew got all this on tape.

Col Lane didnt even wait until later to discipline us-he called us in that same evening and gave us an phonograph chewing that would rival General Patton. I remember Colonel Al Cornett who was in charge of military at that time winked at us all and stated that he didnt see anything wrong with it.

Needless to say when final rank was announced my brother got ensign in a company instead of Adjutant and the film crew had to come back the next week and shoot the whole sequence again! I feel horrible about this to this day but I wish you guys could have seen the look on Colonel Lane’s face!”

And there you have it. Enjoy the forums and send me feedback on the new site layout. Have a good weekend everyone!