Northeast of Kalamazoo, the fierce flat midwest begins to mellow into sandy hills. Middle-aged sugar maples and oaks arch over the county blacktop road. About 175 miles from the Loop is a gravel crossroads marked by what from a distance looks like a big white life preserver with a brown board underneath.
Today, those founders might think the camp’s mission has shrunk to a kids’ summer camp and a weekend retreat for urbanites, distinguished primarily by its rustic facilities and an unusual amount of internal politicking. But the place and the people inspire a fierce loyalty: enough–so far–to overcome decades of penury, underpaid staff, burned-out board members, and a physical plant one step ahead of deterioration. Former codirector Don Shall left unhappily in 1984, but he doesn’t condemn–he marvels. “By all reasonable analysis, this place has no reason to be open–except something called heart.”
They certainly looked good to David Sonquist, a charismatic psychology PhD who interrupted his career in mainstream education in 1935 to work full-time in the co-op movement. Along with A.W. “Pop” Warriner of Central States, he led weekend house meetings in Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland, and organized more than 100 co-op buying clubs. He chaired Central States’ board for three years and provided inspiration to the depression-cowed would-be cooperators. (Fred Thornthwaite, a Circle Piner now in his 80s, then a chemical engineer for Parke-Davis, recalls that Sonquist inspired him to quit his job and start organizing housing co-ops in the Detroit area.)
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“The League took a daring leap into the unknown,” wrote Sonquist. “[We] went back to our cooperative societies, eighteen of them, who advanced the rentals on their cabins to pay for the annual rent of the camp and the equipment necessary . . . the number and size of the Institutes were increased and the length of the camp season extended to 10 weeks [and a family camp was added]. . . . The response was immediate. Attendance totalled 700 camper weeks, or an average of 70 people per week. Many families found a new outlook on life. Many societies took on new hope and enthusiasm for their tasks. Again it was a people’s movement.”
The people were looking for more than a store to sell them canned goods two cents cheaper–they wanted a different way of living. A few years afterward, Sonquist recalled, “The very first week of camp . . . we faced the perplexing problem of organizing work teams which would distribute the work evenly, which would be automatically elastic, i.e. enlarge or diminish according to the size of the camp; and rotate to avoid the same people doing the same work every day. The whole camp met in ‘Toad Lane Lodge’ with our gas lanterns to light us, to discuss this problem. We filled the large blackboards with possible solutions, with their many consequences. Eleven thirty came, and no solution in sight, until by elimination and combining, one person hit upon the solution which immediately cleared up the trouble” and got the work teams running smoothly and fairly. According to Lauderdale, Circle Pines and the co-ops were also influenced by the Quaker concept of “expectancy,” which holds that people act according to others’ expectations and treatment of them. Many early Circle Piners saw their camp as a place to demonstrate both this progressive educational concept and cooperativism itself.
As Circle Piners’ attention turned toward “our camp,” a daily caravan came down from the north to pitch in. The Quaker work campers, wrote Sonquist, “inspired us all with their fine spirit. . . . So impressed were we with this project that we vowed to organize a Youth Work Camp of our own the following season.”
Expansion-minded Circle Piners such as Sonquist also treasured a plan to start a year-round folk school at Circle Pines. Once the group had committed itself to owning 284 acres, it had to do more than just run a few summer institutes. During November 1944 Sonquist and his wife traveled 2,700 miles studying “progressive school and community organizations” with a view toward admitting 15-25 post-high-schoolers to a practical curriculum. Under the tutelage of “inspired teachers,” students given real-life problems, such as the design and construction of a chair, might be led, say, to a study of color.
