We welcome you to Camp Chip-way

We’re mighty glad you’re here!

We’ll send the air reverberating

with a mighty cheer!

 

Back to camp

 

Women relive a once-in-a-lifetime experience

 

By MARTA HEPLER DRAHOS

 

Record-Eagle staff writer

 

KEWADIN — Wapameo. Akawi. Nawaqua.

 

Even now, the cabin names can summon bittersweet memories for generations of women who, as girls, attended Chippewa Trail Camp on the east shore of Elk Lake.

 

From 1929 to 1984, when it was sold to a battery company for a corporate retreat, the summer camp helped shape the lives of hundreds of young women ages 5-16. So when the first all-camp reunion was held Oct. 8-10, more than 100 former campers, counselors and other staff returned from as far away as Alaska and Mexico to renew friendships, share memories and take what for many would be a last look at the place where they spent some of their happiest times.

 

"There was something about the spirit, the feeling, the bonding, the integrity, the self-esteem here," said reunion organizer Gail Herndon of Del Mar, Calif., who attended the camp from 1952-56. "And for many of us, it was our happiest childhood experience."

 

Like many summer camps, Chippewa Trail offered waterfront activities, horseback riding, games, and arts and crafts. Its specialties were singing, Indian lore and camp craft, in which girls learned field skills like cooking out, backpacking and using tools to build useful things.

 

But it is perhaps best remembered for its ability to help girls grow and become better people, said 65-year-old Kay Foster of Toledo, Ohio, a retired business owner who used to take the train to camp and later flew her three daughters there.

 

"It was a place where I could come and be a girl and be me," said Bittin Duggan, 36, an artist from Oregon and the youngest of Foster’s daughters. "We’d cry when it was time to leave."

 

According to Herndon, the camp’s secret was its long-time director, Marian "Shorty" Simpler, who arrived as a counselor in 1946 and bought the camp seven years later. Now 83 and living in Novi, Simpler operated Chippewa Trail — with and without later partner Susan Webb — for nearly 40 years.

 

"She’s an unbelievable leader," said Renee Bator, 35, of Plattsburgh, N.Y., a professor of psychology at the State University of New York-Plattsburgh. "We had complete respect for her without her ever demanding it. I think we’re all here because of her."

 

Simpler, who was on hand for the reunion, said the camp drew 110 children and 40 staff each summer for four- and eight-week sessions. Among them were dozens of sisters, two or three generations of the same families and hundreds of friends who met at camp each summer and waited eagerly for the next one to roll around.

 

Chippewa Trail holds a special place in their hearts because of one simple philosophy, the former director believes.

 

"We didn’t really run a competitive camp," she said. "Everything was for self-improvement. That’s the way I was brought up. If you were competing, it depended on what horse you drew. I discouraged it in every way."

 

While the camp’s former waterfront has been divided into seven parcels, all under contract, much remaining property has been spared from development by Torch River Party Store owner Mike Mahaffey. A relative newcomer to northern Michigan, Mahaffey now owns 45 acres of former camp property, including five cabins, the horse ranch and the old dining hall known as The Lodge.

 

Although he converted the dining hall into his residence, Mahaffey has tried to keep the camp’s memory alive. He renamed a road leading through the property Wapameo Drive, after one of the camp cabins, and preserved the bell tower, which once signaled meals and the end of activity sessions. Even The Lodge boasts many of its original features.

 

"It was built in 1927 and it has some amazing features and memories for the girls," Mahaffey said. "It’s where they took all their meals, and their closing ceremonies were performed there. We have literally 50 to 100 of these old paddles that they used to make and carve their names into. They go back to 1955. And then we have pictures of the old camp and the old activities."

 

Mahaffey volunteered his property for the recent camp reunion. Although it was somewhat altered, the "senior circle" rang again with the sounds of campers at play.

 

While Bator and former cabin-mate Nicole Kelly of San Francisco re-enacted a hoop dance learned long ago, Michigan sisters Tat and Natalie Field (1950-1952) played a game with Lummi sticks, using sticks Natalie Field had custom-made at a lumber company. Other reunion activities included a game of Camp Jeopardy, dancing at the Indian Council and a session or two of the Log, a sort of talent show where participants can sing, dance or read their works aloud.

 

"It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience," Bator said.