By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
The only donation comparable to one received from the Duchossois family was the one from E. Root and Bessie Fitch themselves to establish Fitch Camp for Dowagiac school children on Cable Lake in 1941.
E. Root Fitch Foundation President Jerry Hannapel announced Wednesday that the camp has accepted real property adjacent to the camp valued at more than $500,000.
Hannapel said the Duchossois family is aware that the camp will need to sell the Dewey Lake property with 135 feet of lake frontage for operating funds but intends to keep more than six acres abutting Fitch Camp.
"My thought was to keep it as a natural buffer zone with deer and turkeys. Someday we may expand the nature trail. The other thing we may do, depending on the way the board sees it, we may sell off some of the back property to give lake owners more depth," Hannapel said in an interview at Hannapel Home Center.
Foundation funds are held by the trust department of Fifth/Third Bank.
Charles Ross, certified public accountant, does accounting for the camp.
The camp each summer hires numerous counselors to run the camp under the direction of Steven Mast, a Dowagiac teacher.
Fitch Camp serves children finishing second grade through fifth grade in the Dowagiac Union Schools District.
Fitch Camp also runs a Friday swim program for migrant students, as well as teaching campers from the Dowagiac public school system to swim.
The camp pays to train counselors to become water safety instructors to run the 1,000-foot waterfront on Cable Lake.
Counselors are largely prior campers who go on to college and need summer employment.
Prior to making the donation, the Duchossois family investigated the status of the foundation and visited the camp, where they found a positive environment characterized by enthusiastic counselors and campers.
The Fitch board thanks the Duchossois family and recognized the director, counselors and staff for creating an environment that is fun for its participants.
Dayle Duchossois spoke in June with Hannapel, who grew up at Dewey Lake and even today lives near the camp.
She wrote in a June 24 letter from Chicago, "It is always a pleasure to hear the old stories about the lake and to speak with someone who knew my grandfather, Al Duchossois. Our family had three generations of summers on Dewey Lake and we would like to see Al and Erna's well-loved property continue to create wonderful summers as well as be an asset to the community of Dowagiac."
Hannapel and Secretary-Treasurer John Magyar, a Dowagiac attorney, responded in a June 27 letter that the donation "could not be timelier."
The trust "has grown over the years and we have received some additions to the trust," they wrote. "However, our budget has also increased due to the wages we pay the youth who are the counselors at the camp. We are currently spending in excess of our corpus growth to run the camp. We depend upon the growth of the stock market to create the needed revenues for the camp. This does not always show net growth. Although we have been fortunate in the past, additional funding through a donation of the Duchossois property would help insure that our camp can continue to operate as it has."
"We prefer to attract highly motivated young students to be our counselors. This means we must pay them a respectable wage so that they will assist our campers and not be forced to work elsewhere," according to the Fitch Foundation letter. "The youth that we hire from Dowagiac schools often excel in academics as well as athletics and are role models for the children who attend camp. This is a win-win situation for both the children attending the camp and the counselors."
Olympic wrestler Chris Taylor, for whom Dowagiac's football field is named, was a counselor in the 1960s.
Fitch Camp's board also includes Matt Cripe, DDS, David Mahar, Susan Worley, Harvey Ross, Chris Cox, Dave Springsteen, Bruce Laing and Dustin Dalton.
Fitch Camp was created on 70 acres from the old Redding Resort in the Sister Lakes area.
From the time camp opened in 1941 until 1993, the experience cost 15 cents, which included lunch and transportation. The board grudgingly boosted the price to $1 in 1993.
"I don't think there's another camp like it in the United States," said Paul Bakeman, a Daily News Hometown Hero in 1994. "Where can a kid go to camp for $1 a day when the meals cost more than that?" Mr. Bakeman headed the foundation from Mr. Fitch's 1949 death until he passed away in August 2001 at 87.
Fitch Camp was born under the dark cloud cast by World War II.
The front page of the May 14, 1941, Daily News reporting plans for Fitch Camp was mostly dominated by news of Nazis and Adolf Hitler.
The day Fitch Camp went public, Dizzy Dean retired from pitching, Harold Sparks was getting ready to become 4-H youth agent that July and Judge Herbert E. Phillipson Jr. and D. Bruce Laing were weeks away from graduating from high school with Dowagiac's Class of 1941.
The story mentions that Superintendent Jamse Lewis, President Carl D. Mosier and the Fitches began funding the youth movement in Dowagiac 70 years ago in 1936 by arranging for meeting places and providing youth dances.
Mr. Bakeman said a girls club met at the old Federated Church which later burned and the boys club was housed in the parish house basement of nearby St. Paul's Episcopal Church.
In the early years, when campers tended victory gardens, one of Fitch Camp's most important functions was providing a respite from war.
"Recreation is something we all need – especially in these busy days when we are very tense with the thoughts and worries of war," confided a yearbook.
Says another passage: "Kids who would never be able to go to the lake every day because of the gas (rationing) situation can now do so."
Dowagiac's 1943 yearbook reported that the four-acre victory garden yielded 1,000 quarts of tomatoes, 400 quarts of beans, 100 quarts of sweet corn, 210 bushels of potatoes and five bushels of dried lima beans.
In 1945 food raised on the farmland by the camp went into winter hot lunches served to underprivileged youths at the school cafeteria in town.
A photo from the 1940s published in a yearbook shows Herb Teichman, founder of the International Cherry Pit Spit, and future lumberman Grafton Cook communing with nature.
The Fitches had two sons – James, who died in a childhood fall from a hayloft, and Robert, who lived in South Bend, Ind., until his death in the early 1990s.
Mr. Bakeman said the Fitches lived on Oak, Courtland and Green streets at various points in their lives.
"He was a true gentleman of the past, college-educated in New York, where he majored in Greek. He loved children."
Mr. Fitch was around the camp bearing his name for the first eight years.
His only grandson, Jimmy, was stricken with leukemia.
As Mr. Fitch's secretary and driver, Mr. Bakeman accompanied him to New York and the West Coast. "It was a wonderful life that very few people knew," he said, recalling winters spent at the Princess Martha – the same hotel favored by the owner of the New York Yankees.
Mr. Fitch "was like a dad to me," said Mr. Bakeman, who always followed the credo, "If you can get one kid inspired, he'll inspire the rest."
n July 17, 1991, Mr. Bakeman received a Chamber of Commerce Pillar of Excellence in recognition of his 50th anniversary.
The first board consisted of the Fitches, Superintendent Jim Lewis, Paul Bakeman, Ruth Mosier, the Rev. Joseph Fox of the Federated Church and Dr. George Green.
Transportation is provided by Dowagiac school buses which are temporarily turned over to the camp.
Fitch wanted to instill patriotism, so each morning children recited the Pledge of Allegiance.
Theme weeks were popular through the years, such as American Week, Indian Week, Pet Week and Nature Week, which included a scavenger hunt.