Hi there everyone……it’s been a long time since I’ve updated the site. Grad school’s been quite intense and, to be honest, Culver hasn’t been in my immediate thoughts a whole lot. This site’s been more or less sitting around collecting dust. If you’re interested in getting it moving again or just want to say hi, drop me an e-mail. (mrflora at goculver.com)

Here’s something interesting though. As many of you know, Culver announced it was pulling the plug on its aviation program this winter. This didn’t come as a huge surprise to many I’m sure, but a lot of us were definitely hoping the academy would find a way to put planes in the air again.

That was not the case however.

John Buxton, Culver Academies’ current and 12th head of schools, wrote a letter to aviation alumni and supporters back in January that I just stumbled across today. In it he explains the official reasons for closing down the program. As I found it quite interesting, I thought I’d post it online.

Dear ____________:

At its fall meeting, the Board of Trustees voted to discontinue the Aviation program at Culver. A general announcement of this decision has not been shared with the alumni or the student body, but an announcement will appear in the next edition of the Culver Alumni Magazine. I am writing so you have advance notice of this and so that you will not be surprised when the formal notification is made. You have been close to the Aviation program at Culver, and you need to understand why we have reached this very unfortunate conclusion. Obviously, the tragedy that occurred on August 10, 2005 was extremely difficult for the school, the staff, and the families involved. The accident led to 12 months of intense examination and questioning and a thorough analysis of every aspect of our program. We had all of our planes examined; we did benchmarking with other aviation schools; we worked with the FAA and the NTSB closely as we tried to get answers to our questions; and we worked closely with the insurance company to see what the future might look like. In the final analysis, it was clear that it would be too great a commitment of assets to one program in order to bring aviation back to Culver as we have known it.

You may know that this past summer we offered a ground school program for aviation students. We created a state of the art aviation lab so students could participate and practice in a “virtual” environment. The program was actually quite successful even though no one left the ground. We provided transportation for students to travel to local airports for their flight training, but most students seemed content to work in the lab for their training, knowing that they would be able to pursue individual pilot lessons after they attain the age of 16.

In the meantime, we have thoroughly researched the cost and the limits for insurance coverage, the costs of new planes, the cost of relocating the airport and runway operation farther away from the Woodcraft Campus. We concluded we were unable to conduct the program at the level we would want with the protection we would need. Clearly this is a financial more than a philosophical decision.

I imagine you will be disappointed, but I certainly hope you will understand and support our decision. I wanted you to know that this decision to discontinue the program has been reached and that the official announcement will be coming out in a few months.

I hope this letter finds you well, and I appreciate your understanding.

Sincerely yours,

John N. Buxton

What do you think of the letter?  Any thought son aviation getting shut down? Suprised?

DISCUSS THIS IN THE FORUMS

One of the great things about working in Company Two this last summer was having the “Superman Returns” film out in the theaters during camp. It certainly meant we had a lot of Superman stuff to have fun with all summer, and it also made it seem like perhaps the planets were aligning a bit for Naval 2.

This summer though Company Three will be the unit with a movie.

“300″ directed by Zach Snyder (of the great “Dawn of the Dead” remake) is another retelleing of the Battle of Thermopylae, when 5,000 Greeks, led by King Leonides and 300 of his Spartans stood their ground in the face of a 300,000-strong Persian invasion force…and held them off. It’s about as “badass” as any story you’ll find in a history book.

The film is an adaptation of Frank Miller’s excellent, painted graphic novel “300″ (should be required reading for all N3ers) and was produced with his involvement a la 2005’s “Sin City.”

The trailer is online, and it looks spectacular. Check it out here. Could this be a good omen for Spartan Three’s summer 2007 chances?

Discussion: “What do you think of the trailer?”

Links:

Check out the “300″ Novel on Amazon.com

Official “300″ Web Page with Production Videos/Blog

“300″ on the Internet Movie Database

Battle of Thermopylae on Wikipiedia

Naval Three Culver-pedia page

Naval Three Message Board

Hey gang, here’s a neat find that turned up in GoCulver’s eBay section.  From the auction page:
“You are bidding on a Sept 1926 version of the Seahorse, Official Quarterly of the Culver Summer Schools Alumni Association, Culver Indiana. Great 32 page booklet with lots of black and white photographs. Good condition for age with some small dings,etc.  Please email questions.”

Click on the link below to place a bid and bring home a neat piece of Culver history (current price is $4.99).  A lot of the pictures from the old days are really wild.  We’ve already seen how crazy the Tuxis requirements from back then were…I’d imagine that there’d be some fun pieces in an alumni publication from the 20’s as well……and when you buy it…let me know so we can get scans of it on here!

You can see scans of some of the old Culver pictures and documents in our photo gallery section.

• September 1926 edition of “The Seahorse”, the Official Quarterly of the Culver Summer Schools Alumni Association

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.

Hey there everyone! Sorry for the slowness on the updates, things have been hectic this week during staff training and its thrown me out of my “rhythm” for updating.

Staff training has been going on all week and this morning, campers will start officially registering for Culver Summer Camps 2006. Very exciting. Here are some fun facts I’ve heard this week:

• After a thorough search, Company One gained a Sr. Counselor on Thursday, Mr. Karamon, perhaps known by some as the Assistant Military Activities coordinator from summer 2005.
• Enrollment is way up this summer with approx. 1352 campers attending. Last summer involved roughly 1298 campers.
• 38% of this year’s Culver Summer Campers hail from outside the United States down from 40% last summer.  There are 26 internationals on staff this year.
• Aviation A and B have been combined this summer into one unit, “Aviation” and will join the Troop in all athletic competitions to compete against the naval companies as the “Air-Cav.” Aviation contains around 40 campers this year and Troop is up over 60 this summer (!) which means this new unit could be quite a force.
• The main upper camp SOP has seen substantial revision this summer as predicted on this very site. The TUXIS program has indeed been tied into rank for all upper campers. In order to gain any sort of rank promotion at the end of the summer, a camper must have earned his or her Tuxis.
• The Tuxis banner is also making a return to Upper Camp, going to the boys and girls units who showed the most participation in Tuxis each week.
• The girls are adding two new naval events to their competition each week, a wherry race (single pull) and a kayak race (double sprint). As these two “events” have long been a part of the Great Race it seemed only sensible to have the ladies race them throughout the summer to build of more experience.
• Boys intramural sailing will now include a 420 class sailing race on Tuesday’s.

Those are some of the interesting changes/developments we’ve been hearing about this week. We’ll keep you posted as things develop. Stay tuned. Our first camper just turned up in Naval 2!

Discuss

Emily Bazelon considers the growing ranks of summer campers who are age 9 and under in a new piece on Slate today. She’s generally interested in whether or not it’s healthy to send a son or daughter off to camp at that age and also in the sort of parents who might do such a thing. Her conclusion, in part:

“Overnight camp isn’t for every 6-year-old, but for a hearty subset, a summer sleeping on the top bunk and making God’s eyes with fellow sprites can be heavenly. The reason more children this age don’t go is that the parents, not the kids, aren’t ready.”

Read it Here

While I agree with her assertion that there are probably a lot more six-year olds who are ready to go to an overnight summer camp than parents who are ready to send their six-year olds to an overnight summer camp I think you have to look at the length, activities, and supervision situation at each camp. They really do differ greatly. I can see a 6-year old having a great time at a 5-6 day overnight camp where he or she will be spending time with 2-3 counselors at all times. Woodcraft camp is six weeks long however. That’s a friggin’ long time for a kids that young (which is why they start ‘em a few years older right?).

That said, i think my dad probably started Woodcraft at age 8 (edit: 12 actually) and while I’ve certainly heard his memories of grousing about it all the time I don’t think he’s ever said anything that amounted to “I was homesick at Woodcraft” so perhaps I’m just giving out little guys too little credit.

Any of our Woodcraft camp staff or alumni have anything to say about the youngest kids at Culver? What’s the camper/staff ratio these days by the way? Discuss.

The Tuxis Program has long been a crucial part of Culver Summer Camps, providing every Culver Upper Camper the opportunity to earn a medal to wear with his or her dress A by completing a series of merit-badge style accomplishments as set forth by their Culver Summer Camps Tuxis Director. Third classmen may earn their bronze tuxis medal, second classmen have their silver to work towards, while first classmen set their sights on the gold tuxis. Each of these medals is progressively more difficult to earn with the understanding that moving up in rank at Culver means you have to perform at a higher level.

But how hard is it to earn you Tuxis medal? And how have the Tuxis standards fared over the years? Should there be more testing involved? less testing? more sports? less? What about those pesky Tuxis essays people work on, or their Tuxis collages.

I’m curious to hear what you think about the general level of challenge to the TUXIS program. In fact I’m starting a new poll on the front page about it, so weigh in with a vote there and your comments in the thread in Main Guard.

Finally to adress the questions about changing Tuxis standards I present to you an honest goodness 1920 Silver Tuxis Sheet that I tracked down using our new Ebay section just last week. What do you think of the point requirements? Any of them stand out? Let’s take a look…

…Read the rest of this entry…

Here are links to the main boarding school review sites with Culver Military Academy and Culver Girls Academy reviews and opinions (as well as Culver Summer Camps!).

Some of these review sites are more sophisticated than others but if you’re a parent or camper looking to voice your opinion online about Culver or wanting to read thoughts and perspectives about Culver Academy and whether it’s the right place to send your son or daughter, look no further:

• Epinions Reviews of Culver Summer Camps - These are pretty interesting and quite thorough in places.
• Culver Academy on Boarding School Review - This is your best bet. Boarding school review is extremely well-designed and thorough. Their Culver page includes some nice pictures and a video as well.
• Culver Military Academy and Girls Academy on GreatSchools.net - More good info though I’m not as big a fan as I am of the Boarding School review site.

Enjoy. Remember you can always create a profile on Go Culver.com and post in our forums to learn more, talk to Culver people, and post your thoughts.

Related links:

Scholarship Finder | Harvard Student College Essay Reviews | Find Money For School

As part of the festivities taking place on the board tomorrow night (click here to learn more) we’ll be unveiling some really tremendous vintage Culver documents that have recently come into my possession.  I don’t want to spill too many beans before I go live with them but let me say that a certain someone has been winning some Ebay auctions recently…one of these is a real screamer that you’ll all love…

Looking forward to tomorrow night!

RSVP for the reunion here. Think of some ideas for what we can talk about too!

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…

DISCUSS IN FORUMS

The Great Race, Communications Relay, Pegasus Drill, and Final Ball won’t be the only things going on during the last week of camp this summer for Culver Military Academy Summer campers, staff, and parents. They, along with select Woodcrafters and Specialty campers, will also be asked to fill out a new survey commissioned by the Culver Summer Schools Alumni Assocation in order to guage the effectiveness of Culver’s current marketing efforts, processes, and curriculum.

The surveys are being funded by the CSSAA, produced and conducted by Indianapolis-based Loyalty Research Center, and will be overseen by the CSSAA Program and Student Life Committee. The questions posed to campers, staff, and parents will be a little different for each group and parents will have the option of filling it out online.

According to Stan Mefford (CSSAA board member WC‘71 NB‘74, the surveys are meant to “see how good of a job Culver is doing with its summer programs” and will be examined very closely by the Culver Educational Foundation, CSSAA, and the Culver Summer Schools and Camps Administration. “The CSSAA board believes that it is important to see what our customers see, to understand why people come to Culver and who they are demographically,” says Mefford.

Though the impact of the information gleaned from these surveys may not be felt for some time Mefford says the results will eventually be used “to understand the perception, market more precisely, and to improve the summer programs.” According to him “the CSSAA board believes that Culver’s summer program has no equal throughout the country” and has commissioned this survey to understand how Culver can continue in its excellence in their summer programs.

What do you think about this? Leave a comment.

These images (click them to view full-size, of course) are from the town of Culver rather than the Academy proper, but I was digging through some images I haven’t yet added to the library’s website, and these jumped out at me. I found them in the 1942 editions of the Culver Citizen newspaper last year while hunting for some other story. With Memorial Day on the way, I thought it fitting to post a few wartime pics from the past.

Those who have spent much time at Culver Academy may be familiar with the little movie theater here — I think its official title is Lakeside Cinema now — but may not know that, in the 1950s, it was one of the few theaters in the US to utilize the audio technology that eventually evolved into today’s “surround sound.” In those days, it was the El Rancho theater, and it served not only as an entertainment venue, but also as the site for some churches to meet during interim periods. In 1954, for example, when the existing St. Mary of the Lake Catholic Church burned to the ground, the church met for Mass at the movie theater while funds were being raised to construct the current church!

The newspapers from those early war years were full of stories of how the town of Culver and the Academy, respectively, pulled together to help the war effort (the Academy campus, I am told, had regular security patrols for the cadets and of course many, many Culver men went off to fight in the war, and many didn’t make it back). I thought that the examples here of small-town junk rallies illustrate how a small community like Culver pulled together during those times, young and old alike. The picture above is from November, 1942.

Incidentally, the movie theater, you’ll notice, was owned by the Hoesel family. The same family today owns the movie theater in downtown Plymouth, on Michigan Street. I also found it interesting to note the movie that kids could get into if they brought a tire that day: “Holiday Inn” starring Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby.

The other image, an advertisement/poster for a “Junk Rally” in Culver from September of 1942, notes that the junk is to be brought to “Pura’s yard” on Main Street. Pura owned the town scrap yard, which I’m told was a bit of an eyesore in its day, and part of which sat where the Culver Cove is today…a bit of a change in appearance!

Leave Comment

New thread over in the Discussion Forums, a running numbered list of reasons to go to Culver Military Summer Camp. I started it off with one of mine. Head on over, read it, and post one of your own. Let’s see if we can’t keep it going like the gargantuan Word Association Thread (now up to 172 pages…after I reduced the number of entries per page…).

• Top X Reasons to Go to Culver

Mr. Sonny Atkins was announced last month as the new Director of Woodcraft Camp, replacing Janet Kline in the position. Recently, Woodcraft Counselor Lt. Joe Gee (D&B-NB) asked him a few questions on his outlook towards his new role.

Q: Where are you from?

A: I have lived all over the mid-west, MN, MI, PA, OH, IN. My birth state is Minnesota.

Q: How did you hear about Culver and specifically Woodcraft Camp?

A: I have been involved with Culver for the past 5 years. I have been the outside contractor that has trained the Challenge Course (leadership) staff. I also was part of the construction of the new ropes elements, and have done the inspection of the course for the past 5 years. I worked with Kim Kickert. I have known about Woodcraft ever since I have been involved in the camping industry.

Q: Where have you been working most recently?

A: My past job was with a Challenge Course company called ERi (Experiential Resources, Inc.) We were a full service company providing construction, training, consultation, inspections and equipment. I was the Director of Training. Traveled the country training camp staff how to safely operate their ropes courses. I also built them. I also am part owner of The Adventure Center in Bloomington, IN. …Read the rest of this entry…

Posted by Mr. Flora at 7:28 PM

And here we are folks with the fourth and final part of Go Culver.com’s look at recent announcements for summer 2006. This time we’re looking at some changes afoot over at the Woodcraft Camp as well as some very good news for Upper Camp course offerings. As always, head on over to the CulverTalk Forums to discuss afterwards.

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