The Walloon Outdoor Club: Fun at the Foot in the 1960’s

THE WALLOON OUTDOOR CLUB

FUN AT THE FOOT IN THE 1960’S

By Lauren Macintyre

“It was the most fun time of my life,” recalls longtime Wallooner Charley Zimmer when speaking of the Walloon Outdoor Club, where he served as a counselor and water skiing instructor. “We just loved it,” echoes Wendy Booth Boyd, who attended the camp and whose brother, Chuck Booth, served there as a counselor.

The Walloon Outdoor Club (WOC), an innovative day camp that operated in the Walloon Lake village from 1964-68, was the brainchild of Dr. Gerard Mudd, a prominent St. Louis cardiologist with a large cottage on the South Shore. Not wanting to send his five children Mary Linda, Madonna, Milissa, Marian and Gerard away to camps at that time, he and his wife Elizabeth decided to establish the Walloon Outdoor Club. The Mudds thought it would also appeal to other Walloon families who wanted to keep their children productively engaged in outdoor activities while spending summers at the lake.

Dr. Mudd was a member of a longtime Walloon family whose tenure on the lake was established nearly one hundred years ago. His father Dayton Henry Mudd, an original partner and vice president of J.C. Penney, came to the lake in the early 1920’s. Dayton and his wife Margaret Flemma built a large Sears kit cottage on South Shore Drive, which was then passed on through the family. In 1951 his son Gerard and Elizabeth built an imposing log home on adjacent land. The original Mudd cottage was occupied for many years by Gerard’s sister Margaret “Muddie” Fletcher, then later sold to the Clark family.

Getting the Outdoor Club up and running was a mammoth undertaking. Imagine the challenge of designing the curriculum, finding a location, hiring staff, purchasing sports equipment, and then after completing that, recruiting campers to come to the program! The Mudds were apparently not daunted by these tasks. As their son Gerard notes “Our father built up a whole infrastructure for the future of the WOC, including the purchase of buildings, furniture, fixtures, sailboats, canoes, motorboats, skies, archery equipment, radios, shotgun reloading equipment, trampoline and a GMC Suburban truck.” So meticulous a planner was Dr. Mudd that he chronicled everything related to the WOC in a 160-page journal still owned by the family today.

For the headquarters, Dr. Mudd purchased an iconic building in the Walloon Village: the beloved Brower’s Grocery and Soda Fountain. Originally built in 1908 as the Shepard Delicatessen, it had various owners and iterations including Crago’s Grocery and a brief stint as a dance hall. Later it became Brower’s, which is how most Wallooners today remember it. Famous for its ice cream soda fountain and artfully patterned tin ceiling, it was every young Wallooner’s favorite spot in the Village in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. After the Browers retired, the building then found new life as the hub of Outdoor Club activity. Dr. Mudd also bought the quonset hut next door.

The Mudds used their own expansive log home as a center of WOC activity. The water sports took place there, as well as tennis on a large court the family had built. Dr. Mudd’s wife Elizabeth supervised the activities at the house. As her daughter Marian Mudd Miaskiewicz notes “The campers came there for swimming lessons, water skiing, canoeing, tennis and all around fun water sports. It was basecamp for the first few years.” Camper Wendy Booth Boyd loved going to the house. “Mrs. Mudd really kept us entertained there. She was such a great person.”

Dr. Mudd assembled an impressive cast of educators, friends and families to staff the Outdoor Club. The Mudds had founded a prestigious boys’ school in St. Louis called St. Louis Priory; from that school Dr. Mudd brought Brian Barry, a physics instructor and retired member of the Royal Navy to head the WOC. Later Marty McCabe, another staff member from the school, took over. Charles Switzer, a student at Oxford, ran the Sea Ray cruises and sailing program, which included a fleet of Javelin sailboats.

Wallooner Charley Zimmer taught water skiing, and while at Duke University recruited his good friend Jeff Mullins, star Duke basketball player and Olympian, to work at the WOC also. The Mudds housed many of the St. Louis staff in the family’s large log home. “It was always a full house which amazingly never felt crowded,” remarks Marian.

Counselor Nancy Noel with campers waiting for the Mackinac Island ferry. Counselor Bob Lohman leading a group of young campers. (Photos courtesy of Wendy Booth Boyd)

An Aug. 1, 1964 article from the Petoskey News-Review describing the first season of the WOC, with a picture of the old Brower’s building (Photo from the Greenwood Cemetery archives)

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Charley and Jeff both taught water skiing behind the Zimmers’ Chris Craft Holiday and did a variety of odd jobs for Dr. Mudd. Charley also led a team of twelve WOC counselors, one of whom was Debbie Howell Kurd. “It was great fun,” comments Debbie. “Dr. Mudd felt young people needed constructive structure and opportunity to better our lives and to bring the youth of the lake together. It offered many of us new young counselors the chance to be responsible individuals!” Many of Dr. Mudd’s children were involved in WOC activities as were their Fletcher cousins who lived next door in the original family house.

Another much-loved counselor at the WOC was Nancy Noel who taught horseback riding, but is perhaps best known for her extraordinary artistic ability. Nancy painted a striking mural with a Tom Sawyer theme behind the old soda fountain in the WOC headquarters, the old Brower’s building. “She was so talented,” comments Wendy Booth Boyd. “Everyone loved her.” Nancy, who went on to have a celebrated career as a contemporary impressionist under the name N.A. Noel, sold millions of prints across the country. Although sadly Nancy passed away last year, her stunning artwork may still be viewed on her studio website.

The activities of the Outdoor Club were astonishing in number and breadth of interests, including swimming, sailing, water skiing, canoeing, ropes, camping. equestrianship, camping, archery, shooting clays, a trampoline and tennis. Camping and horseback riding took place at Babcock Farm on Springvale Road. For additional entertainment there were dances, movies in the Brower building, greased watermelon contests in the water, a pool table and card games.

Nor were the WOC activities limited to Walloon. There were expeditions to Mackinac Island, camping trips to the Upper Peninsula and boat cruises on the Inland Waterway. In 1965 WOC campers and counselors Bob Crowe, Charles Switzer, Tim Marcum, Michael Convy and Marty McCabe cruised the club’s Sea Ray 230 from Oden through the Inland Waterway, to Burt and Mullet Lakes, then Lakes Huron, Michigan and Charlevoix, before hauling their boat out at Boyne City. The five intrepid sailors and their boat were featured on the front page of the August 12, 1965 Walloon Lake News.

One of many Wallooners with vivid memories of the WOC is Doug Lotspeich, now a professional actor under the name Doug Ballard, who attended the WOC every day it was open from the first year to the last. “It was a marvelous place of friends and adventure,” Doug comments. “We especially looked forward to overnight campouts because it meant Capture The Flag, campfires, ghost stories and the inevitable midnight raid from counselors who would sneak into camp in the dark to scare us.”

The Mudd family made an astonishing contribution to life on the lake during the 1960’s. “Dr. Mudd poured untold resources into making sure we had all the equipment we needed and boy did we! Almost every ability that I have as an adult I learned at the club: sailing, canoeing, swimming, skiing, camping, horseback riding, shooting, archery, fire building and just about every other skill you need when you are outdoors,” Doug comments.

But after five successful but undoubtedly exhausting years, and with no one else to operate it, the Mudd family reluctantly decided to end the WOC. While it was unfortunate that there was no one to continue the Mudds’ work, the impact that the family had on lake life is incredible. As their daughter Marian Mudd Miaskiewicz notes, “Dad offered a camp that rivaled the Boy Scouts. Girls and boys learning and competing on the same playing field. Dad believed in gender equality long before its popular acceptance!”

Now more than 50 years later, the WOC lives on in many people’s memories, but what remains of the WOC infrastructure? The Shepard/Brower’s building, alas, was torn down in 2006 to make way for a condo development. Pieces of its famed tin ceiling, sold as a benefit for the Crooked Tree Library, can be found in many a Walloon cottage. The Quonset hut that housed the trampoline and other activities is also long gone.

The family no longer owns the big log house on South Shore Drive/M-75, but the Mudd children, most of them still in St. Louis, retain their love of the lake. Milissa Mudd Beaty comes to Walloon every summer, renting a house in the old family neighborhood. The picturesque Mudd family log house next door is now owned by John and Susan Crowe of Kansas City, who have beautifully maintained its historic aspect. In September, 2021 Milissa was able to tour her old family home and relive its storied past with the Crowes. The original Sears kit cottage next door remained in the Clark family, but when Bob and Mary Clark Bessette took ownership, they discovered that the house could not be saved due to its deteriorated condition. Their stunning new house, however, bears an astonishing resemblance to the original house.

Although some of the buildings where WOC activities took place are no more, the camp itself lives on in the memories of those who took part in it. “It was a moment in time and a set of experiences that couldn’t happen today. I’m grateful I happened to be there when it did,” comments Doug Ballard. “A very successful adventure,” adds Charley Zimmer. And as Gerard Mudd reminisces, “For me, going to Walloon was like traveling to a different country to live for the summer. We would roll down the windows as we approached the turn off 131 to Walloon and smell the air. When we entered the house it also had a distinctive smell that said ‘home in Walloon.’ We forgot the news and what was happening in St. Louis or anywhere else. We had a whole set of different friends that only knew us from Walloon and vice versa. A little slice of heaven on earth.”

Dr. Mudd and wife Elizabeth, who sadly passed away in 1990 and 2013 respectively, left a legacy of inspired philanthropy both on Walloon and in St. Louis. As Marian concludes, “Dad and Mom simply wanted to create a fun summer experience that would generate lifelong friendships and wonderful memories for all who were involved. I’d say they accomplished that mission!”