8 minute read
50 Years of Indian Creek Youth Camp
Advertisement
— plaque outside Hilltop Cabin at Indian Creek Youth Camp
50 Years of Indian Creek Youth Camp
Text and Photos by Jennifer Cohron | Camp photos courtesy of Vicki Blackwood
ob Gurganus stepped up to the bell that marks time for campers at Indian Creek Youth Camp and gave its string a tug. The bell pealed, signifying that the first activity for the first week of camp was about to begin on May 31. The loud, clear tone also marked the official beginning of ICYC’s 50th year. Last year, for the first time since 1971, the bell was silent. ICYC’s board of trustees made the difficult decision to take the year off because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Gurganus, the board’s secretary, first attended camp as an infant. Until 2020, he had been to at least one session every year since its inception. His father’s family donated the land on which ICYC was established, and both sides of his family have been active in camp life for several generations. “You make friends down there that are lifelong friends. The bond that you get in a week is even stronger in some cases than the one you have with people you go to school with for 12 years. Of course, I do believe that it is God — the working of the Word and the Christian atmosphere,” he said. Divine providence was at work well before the first campers arrived in 1971. Inspiration struck minister Earl Barnett, the camp board’s first president, as he was driving past Brunner’s fishing camp in the Pleasant Field community below Parrish in the late 1960s. Barnett saw children playing by the side of the road and realized the need for a local camp where youth could get Christian instruction as well as enjoy nature. Barnett mentioned the idea one night during a service at Cordova Church of Christ. “Making the 900-mile trip from York, Nebraska, Howard C. and Doretta Gurganus visited relatives at Dovertown Church of Christ for the Sunday morning service. For some providential reason, they attended the evening service at Cordova Church of Christ, where I served as minister,” Barnett recalled. “That evening found me entirely ‘out of soap,’ for each and every subject I considered, the members either had heard it many times or knew more about it than me. So I shot in the dark, choosing to speak on the need for Christian education, supporting missionaries and the need to build a youth camp in Walker County.” Gurganus approached Barnett after the service. “As Howard C. Gurganus clasped my hand, he announced, ‘If you want to build that camp, we have 50 acres to give you.’ Thus began the fantastic saga of the
development of Indian Creek Youth Camp, provoking the thought ‘Provided by Providence, Sustained by Faith.’” The old Gurganus homestead that Barnett offered adjoined the fishing camp where Barnett first visualized what would become Indian Creek Youth Camp. Leadership and other volunteers to make the camp a reality came from Church of Christ congregations throughout the county. The first board of trustees was made up of Barnett, Hardie Gurganus, George Salter Jr., Herman King, Newton Gurganus, Otis Burnett and Wilbur Phillips. Other early supporters included Gus Nichols, Ronnie Poore, Paul Wylie, Brodie Plyer, Tommy Chambless and Marcelle Gurganus. While it was under construction, the camp was financed through a dollar-a-month club in which members received an envelope each month to return with their donation inside. Creative fundraisers would become the hallmark of ICYC, which has always relied on the faith and support of individuals to meet its financial needs. In 1975, 200 men, women and children walked from Sixth Avenue Church of Christ in Jasper to the camp — more than 17 miles — in a walkathon to raise funds for a swimming pool and a pavilion. The walkathon was an annual tradition well into the 2000s. After several seasons of trial runs, the camp officially opened on June 27, 1971. Fifty campers were enrolled, and Howard Gurganus served as the director for the week, according to a Daily Mountain Eagle article. The first campers stayed in the old cabins by the creek previously used by the fish camp as well as in the Hilltop Cabin, which is still used today. By 1972, the camp had a total of eight cabins — an equal number for boys and girls. Several new cabins were built during the pandemic year, and some are still under construction. Today the camp has doubled its capacity — eight boys cabins and seven girls cabins. Early ICYC supporters J.G. and Lois Pounds were known and loved by generations of campers as Ma and Pa Pounds. While the land was being cleared for camp, it was Lois Pounds who insisted that one tree be saved in the middle of camp near what became the mess hall. “There are some hatchet marks that Granny showed me. She said when they were clearing land, they started
Intro photo: Campers show off 50 years of ICYC t-shirts.
Previous page: Many memories have been made under the mess hall shade tree.
This page: Scenes from the early days of ICYC.
chopping that down. She said, ‘Oh, don’t chop that down. We’ll use it for a shade tree. We’ve got to have one somewhere,’” Gurganus said. In the camp’s early years, the mess hall (named for Harry Sherer) was the only space where group activities could be held indoors. The shade tree outside became a separate gathering place for campers to gather with friends. “What I remember most about that tree is the guys taking their guitars and sitting out there and singing. We had a rule that there were no transistor radios. So you made your own music. They may not have been very good on the guitar, but it didn’t matter,” said Vicki Blackwood, who came to camp as a counselor in 1972 and has now seen three generations come through camp. Blackwood is an unofficial camp historian. She has pictures and camp T-shirts going back to the 1970s. She can recall when the top of an old pontoon boat was used as a canteen and when children saved their popsicle sticks to use for crafts. She was there when Indian Creek Youth Camp became ICYC because counselors were creating the first camp T-shirts themselves and didn’t want to sew that many letters on the back. She was also present for the birth of another camp tradition — the Green Ghost. Donning green sheets borrowed from Blackwood’s mother and then dyed, counselors came to stunt night as the Green Ghosts of Indian Creek Youth Camp and presented Barnett with a wood-burned plaque. In the years to come, the Green Ghost would cause all sorts of mischief around camp. To this day, it is a camp tradition to wear green on Thursdays to ward off the Green Ghost. Under the mess hall shade tree and elsewhere, summer love is inevitable at camp. Gurganus and his wife are one of several couples who met their future
wives and became engaged there. In 2018, Chad Hagwood flew his childhood sweetheart, Patti Armstong, to camp in order to propose. The two shared their first kiss there in 1989 while serving as camp counselors. They went their separate ways as adults but reconnected several years ago and are now happily married. This summer, another young couple got engaged while working as camp counselors. Annie Claire Cook, an 18-year-old second generation camper, met her longtime boyfriend, Grayson Boler, when they were campers. The two got engaged at camp on July 1. In additional to several proposals, the camp has also hosted two weddings. ICYC was built at the intersection of its namesake creek and Wolf Creek. An overlook where the two come together is known as “the point” and was the site of morning and evening devotionals for many years. The point is where some campers surely have felt closest to God, but the entire camp exists in a unique space outside the reach of time or worldly trouble. (Gurganus was at camp when Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded Kuwait in August 1990 and he didn’t hear about it until he came home several days later.) The thoughts of many ICYC alums were summed up in a 1999 column in the Daily Mountain Eagle: “ICYC is a magical place — a place that is hard to describe even for a man that has all the words in the world. The air seems cleaner. Life seems simpler. God seems to get closer to a person. It’s as if all persecution stops for a little while. Time slows all the way down to a zero - there are more things to do during the day than there is rest to have the strength to do it. By the end of the week, people are hoarse, tired, almost out of clothes and ready to go home. And when they do, they go home feeling a little bit better about their world... God looks over us always, no matter who we are. No matter what people think of you or about you, God is watching over us. And he loves us, like Papa Bear or Ma Pounds does at camp.” •
