Frank Hohenberger photo of a camp play. Marianne Bessire is standing on the platform.
While summer camping is now wellestablished in the county, in 1924 the entire US camping movement was relatively new. Camps for girls did not appear until the early twentieth century. Opening a girls’ camp was a pioneering adventure in Indiana at that time.
The girls lived in log-cabins. At least two were moved from Weed Patch Hill in the Brown County State Park. The cabins were named and included: Skyline, Bluebird, Wren( or Wrens Nest), Lookout, Rush, Hoot Owl, Chipmunk, Pee Wee, Wood Thrush, Valley View., and Whippoorwill. Whippoorwill, the cabin nearest the stage, was not only home to the art director, but also costume shop, property box and green room. Skyline, Kate Andrews and later Musette Stoddard’ s home, was razed and replaced by a modern home in the 1960s. All the other cabins remain.
Camp lasted a full two months. Campers could elect one of two four-week sessions, or stay the entire summer. In 1938, the full two months cost $ 135. One month was $ 75. The girls rose at 6:30 a. m. and went to bed at 8:00 or 9:00 p. m. depending on their age. Campers ranged in age from six to twenty when the camp was in full operation.
By far, the most important activities were art and theater.
Art classes met in the morning. Art activities included pottery, ceramics, loom weaving on different styles of looms, and tooled leather— not just lacing, but designing and lining. Musette Stoddard, the art director, had a china kiln in her basement. Walter Griffiths, of the now-historic Brown County Pottery, would fire the pottery.
“ It would take a big museum to hold all the things they have made in the art department,” Parker wrote in 1938, detailing the output of one 12-year-old camper: a blue chenille rug with orange and lavender stripes, two green bowls, a sandwich tray, a green wall pocket, two pattern weave mats, an English tapestry with a design of mountains and trees with a lovely lady in blue and orange, and a decorated handkerchief box.
It would take at least ten weeks giving a play every day except Sunday to give all the plays over again,” Parker concluded.
During the two months of camp, they put on at least four plays, on the last Saturday of each four weeks’ term. Plays
The teenage Marianne Bessire. mean staging and costuming and properties and lighting.“ All of
Over time, the facilities Nashville came to see the plays, grew to include an outdoor sitting on wooden benches for a theater, tennis courts, swings couple of hours twice a summer,” and see saws, and trails. Marianne Miller recalled.“ The Activities included horseback first person in charge of the riding, archery, dancing class theater was Mr. B. [ Arthur J.( tap, balllet, and ballroom), Beriault ] He recited a whole and Sunday morning services Shakespeare play in an evening, in the outdoor theater. Kamp taking all the parts. And we were Kapers, the camp newspaper, just entranced.” was written by the girls. Continued on 46
July / August 2014 • Our Brown County 45