Dear Happy Campers: 

In 1930, Walter Strong, publisher of the Chicago Daily News, constructed his country getaway summer home for his wife Josephine and their five children. Josephine’s brother, architect Maurice Webster, designed the home to resemble a Tudor castle, knowing Strong’s affection for his European travel and the writings of Sir Walter Scott. Quarried from local limestone, the house sits on a perch above the Rock River with sixteen bedrooms, nine baths, eight fireplaces, gargoyles and several playful secret passageways. Strong, however, never fully enjoyed this fanciful retreat house, as he died suddenly in 1931. 

Widow Josephine Strong maintained the home just outside of Oregon, Illinois, splitting her time between The Castle and her residence in Wilmette. When she passed in 1961, her children had scattered beyond the Midwest and did not wish to maintain the eclectic property, selling it to the Blackhawk Presbytery as a camping facility for $125,000 and naming it Camp Stronghold. 

The Chicago Presbytery had long maintained its own camping programs in Saugatuck, MI. The facility built there by Methodist Minister George W. Gray in 1896 was envisioned as a place to take poor immigrant and inner-city ‘colored’ children from the tenements of Chicago to experience the great outdoors and breathe fresh air. Before moving to Chicago, Gray worked tirelessly with the Freedmen’s fund in Arkansas, arranging for the children of previously enslaved black citizens to attend college. His move to the north was intentional, seeking to minister to the welfare of recently freed families who traveled north seeking a better life, a life which Gray found in many cases tragically impoverished. Gray founded the Forward Movement Association, and through a contact in Oak Park he learned of a cluster of summer homes in Saugatuck, Michigan, on the shores of the lake at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River. Once the land was purchased, a generous gift from Mrs. C.F. Swift (of meatpacking fame) given in memory of her husband made possible the construction of Swift Cottage, later Swift Hall, and a camp was born. 

When Rev. Gray died in 1913, the Forward Movement Association took the recommendation of real estate broker and trustee of The Fourth Presbyterian Church, Edward Pauling, to sell the camp to the Presbytery of Chicago. Presbyterian youth, leadership teams and families along with kids from settlement houses and public housing flocked to Saugatuck each summer to enjoy the undeveloped dunes and beachfront. FPCLG’s own archives hold many photographs and memories of our members and friends enjoying the recreation and beauty of Lake Michigan’s eastern shore.  

The Presbytery of Chicago maintained Presbyterian Camps of Saugatuck until settling a lawsuit out of court which required the Presbytery to pay out substantial damages to the plaintiffs. Needing quick and ready cash, the property’s sale to a private developer was completed in 2014. I’ve often reflected on the tragic absurdity that young boys from same socio-economic conditions Gray hoped to alleviate, were molested by a Presbyterian minister who hid his pedophilia behind the guise of ministry to urban youth. The camp that once promised hope and respite for disadvantaged city kids was liquidated to compensate for the exploitation and abuse of disadvantaged city kids. 

Once sold, the Presbytery of Chicago no longer held a camping/retreat center. Since that time, the Blackhawk Presbytery graciously welcomed Chicago Presbytery congregation members and friends to share in the recreation, fellowship and rejuvenation available at Stronghold. In 2015, Blackhawk Presbytery established Stronghold as a not-for-profit corporation separate from the Presbytery but still committed to church, with youth and family-based outreach. Part of the decision to create an independent corporation was the lesson learned in Chicago—the camp could never become a disposable asset to cover the losses of a floundering Presbytery. 

Members of FPCLG have been involved in several work trips to Oregon to provide labor for renovations and upkeep of the Stronghold buildings; our Confirmation classes have participated in multiple retreats, and we look forward to many opportunities for members of our own congregation to enjoy the facility overlooking the Rock River into the eyes of the historic Blackhawk monument. 

It would be impossible to overestimate the power of camping ministries. For seven years I directed high school camping for Chicago Presbytery youth at Saugatuck. The lessons learned, the strengths discovered, the friendships forged, the faith deepened pay dividends to communities and congregations decades after the campfires are extinguished and vans return home. (Space does not permit my musing on how camp was an important pillar of my own faith formation.) They’re fragile things, camps are. To the cynical they’re nothing more than holes in the forest vacuuming up money for tree-huggers obsessed with macrame and friendship bracelets. But for those touched by their ministry, they are special spaces infused with sacred time. Unfortunately, once they are lost, they are seldom recreated.   

Our Advent Conspiracy Offering this year is a gift to Stronghold Camp and Retreat Center, a place where the quiet of nature is celebrated with playful recreation, ecological gentleness and deeply spiritual connection. I assure you, your gift will be most conspiratorial—an act of disruption against the forces that make life shallow, materialistic, selfish and disjointed. Give as if a young person’s sense of connection and hope depends upon it…because it does. 

Remembering the power of camp, I remain,

With Love, 
Jonathan Krogh 
Your Pastor   

P.S. Why not avoid the rush and make your contribution here?