05/09/12

Frontenac Methodist Campus, Old Frontenac, MN

 Stories from alumni, turned into the Conference Office:

 Frontenac's ambience was a quiet holy with the aged wisdom of the river and the rustic river-community combining to help us experience the uniqueness of a place, a people, and the divine dwelling in peaceful and gentle harmony.  When I think of peace like a river, I think of Frontenac.

Rev. Janiece Redmon

Cross Roads Community UMC, Spicer

  [Frontenac Camp] changed my life, and led me into ministry.

Rev. Jeanne Audrey Powers

Thanks for forcing me to think back to my childhood.    We don't often ponder these things when so much of our past is gone (church, school, farm, family members, childhood friends, etc.)    I can only conjecture that my experience at camp as well as growing up in the small Bingham Lake Methodist church must have set me up for the future.   Today I remain active in various areas of church involvement.

Marj Blommel

I think it cost my parents something like $10 for the 5 days..............that was a lot of money for them......they were farmers and had lived through the depression. 

Faith Bock

In 1961 I went to Frontenac as the camp nurse and met Dave Barte a counselor, who had also attended Frontenac while in junior and senior high. We both lived in St. Paul in 1961 and soon started dating and married in June the following year.

JoAnne Barte

 The first memory that comes to mind is the boys chasing the girls with snakes.  I hadn’t caught on that girls were supposed to scream and run.  Snakes did bother me.

 ….Standing in lines waiting to be let into the dining hall to eat.

Rev. Hilda Parks

I remember my mother admitting that she slid down the banister in the hotel after lights out and my Dad was on security duty.

 I remember my father reluctantly not wearing a tie during camp week.  Most of the preachers did.

Late one evening a vehicle was speeding through the camp. Pop Wagner grabbed his deputy sheriff  badge and jumped in Cliff Wittstruck's car and they took off in hot pursuit. Somehow they managed to stop the vehicle a few miles down the road and Pop Wagner arrested them.

Rev. Marlowe Potter

Mrs. Potter riding down the banister from 2nd floor to first floor in the hotel lobby is told differently from Delores Keech and my mother.  She did it during the quiet time (1 hour rest period) in the afternoon before the staff meeting.

I remember Rev. Cliff Wittstruck always wore white trousers the first day of camp.

Annette DeCourcy Towler