In the late 1990s, as Camp celebrated our 75th year, a Camp Tecumseh history book was published. It is a well-told synopsis of Camp’s first 75 years and the end of the book declared a hope for the future where the history book would be amended by the 100th year. In honoring that hope, we have added the last 25 years into the history book and have re-published it this Summer. The following is an excerpt from the book.
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A New Village
As Camp entered into the new millennium, staff and board leadership were facing a mounting challenge: consistently high demand for summer camp. Each year the available spots in overnight camp filled up faster than the year before, and waiting lists grew increasingly longer. As Dave visited and talked with directors of other YMCA camps, he wrestled with the knowledge that the children on these waiting lists needed a Camp experience, and he became convinced that Tecumseh needed to try to offer that experience to more of them. “I see all these kids that need Camp,” Dave shared. “I was convicted. We need to do this. And the board was very receptive to this. The only question was, can we staff it? At that time, we had lots of applicants, and we said, ‘Yeah, I think we can.’”
Thus began the planning and development of what is now Lake Village, plus the complete renovation of the Oregon Territory. The major hurdles to overcome would be hiring enough summer staff to serve the additional influx of campers and garnering the necessary funds for the building project. Susan “Squirt” Jones and Scott Brosman worked tirelessly at recruiting and hiring that year, and by the grace of God, both staffing and fundraising goals were met. With new cabins and a new dining hall at Scheumann Lodge, Lake Village opened for its first summer in 2004 with Kyle Linback and Ryan Schiesser as village directors. One of the new counselors who was interviewed and hired that year by Scott Brosman was a college student from Michigan named Joel Sieplinga, who would go on to have a long tenure at Camp.
The first summer of Lake Village (LV) involved a lot of adaptability and learning on the fly. Scheumann Lodge’s kitchen was still being finished when summer camp kicked off, so the first couple of weeks involved driving food up from the River Village kitchen for each meal. The LV athletic field had been cleared of trees but was still mostly an expanse of mud, and campers still had to walk to River Village for activities like archery, riflery, and chapel. However, by the following summer in 2005, the facilities and the programming had found their new stride. The Kettelhut Chapel overlooking the lake was built, along with the Ralston Marksmanship Range and a new archery range for Lake Village. The Lookout climbing tower included the highlight feature of a double zip line over the lake, and the Bullet slide, tennis courts, and Survivor Tecumseh course gave older campers a wide variety of progressing activities to look forward to each year. Campers who attended 4th of July week were treated to a spectacular fireworks show over the lake, which quickly became an annual tradition.
Camp really began to flourish with two villages in the mid to late 2000s. In 2007, Kampen Lodge was finished and dedicated, providing Lake Village with a counterpart to the Creative Arts Center as well as an indoor activity space for rainy days, and two Wet Willy slides were installed at the lake. As the geographic footprint of Camp expanded, subcultures of village and unit identity became more significant to campers and counselors, even as the overarching culture of Tecumseh as a whole remained steady. Unit t-shirts were introduced in 2007, and closing campfire became a festive display each week of Brave orange, Blazer green, Warrior blue, Pathfinder pink, Equestrian purple, and Day Camp yellow.
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More information about the history book and how to purchase one will be available at our 100th Celebration Weekend and in future Tecumseh Tales communication.