• By RJ Walters, Editor •
When a joyful noise resounds through the forest of the Lake Louise Christian Community on Labor Day weekend it will be distinctly rich and well versed.
From Sept. 2-5 a Choir Camp Reunion celebrating more than 40 years of spirited songs and hymns and transformed lives will take place at the majestic retreat center and campground in Boyne Falls, Mich.
“People are always telling us, even as adults, that choir camp was extremely important in their life and how much they missed it once they graduated from high school and could no longer come,” said the Rev. David Gladstone, who along with his wife, Terry, has been involved in Choir Camp in a variety of capacities since the mid-1970s. “So part of it is to get together as adults and celebrate that experience and create a great choir again and put on a concert and have a blast.”
The reunion will include a bevy of choir rehearsals, a concert at 7 p.m. Sunday, an evening of sharing memories and honoring camp deans and fireside devotionals.
The cost to stay in a cabin for the weekend ranges from $105 per youth to $180 per adult. Individuals can register and pay deposits online at www.lakelouisecommunity.org.
Janet Lee, 80, of Hillsdale UMC, was introduced to Choir Camp through the Fellowship of United Methodists back in the camp’s infancy when it was just for young girls.
Teaching sacred dance and contemporary worship to youth for eight summers at Choir Camp at Lake Huron Camp in the 1970s, she saw the ministry become co-ed and expand to high-school students.
Lee said she never had the opportunity to go to camp as child, but as an adult, Choir Camp was a wonderful place for her entire family to share its gifts and grow in relationship with others.
“Our younger daughter would go in and Ellen Addington was the choir director and Pat was too young to be a camper and Ellen let her come in and sing in the choir anyway and that young lady is now a music teacher,” she said. “I have a picture of Pat sitting in the rehearsal room waiting for the other kids to come in from wherever they were prior to the choir.”
Larry Wolf, 74, the music director at Big Beaver UMC in Troy, remembers Choir Camp as a place where youth from completely different backgrounds would unify and create lasting bonds over the course of a week.
“People can find things out about themselves from music just by finding, ‘I can do this or I can do that, I can have fun with these other people,’ and it’s a way of bringing kids together who might be shy,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to really express themselves and be accepted because they’ve got some talent.”
After being galvanized to pursue teaching music during his time as a camp counselor at Judson Collins camp when he was younger, Wolf and his wife — who were both music teachers at public schools — directed middle school and high school choirs at the Lake Huron Camp for roughly five years.
Lee summed up the impact she has seen Choir Camp have over the years in the story of a woman whose name she cannot remember, but whose testimony speaks volumes.
Lee said the woman came back to Choir Camp to serve as a counselor several years after her last experience as a camper. Lee said when the woman was a camper she would have “horrific headaches” while at camp and Lee made her promise she would visit a doctor when she returned home.
“(Soon after serving as a counselor) she had a brain tumor and she died,” Lee said. “To think she loved Choir Camp so much she wanted to come back as a counselor…it had changed her life.”
Gladstone said music has had a special way of “soothing his soul” throughout his years of ministry and Choir Camp — now held at Lake Louise every year — continues to be a “serious vehicle for faith development.”
The latest iteration of the long-standing camp is set for July 3-9 with Terry Gladstone and Christie Brewster serving as the deans.
The details
What: Choir Camp Reunion
When: Sept. 2-5
Where: Lake Louise Christian Community camp (Boyne Falls)
Cost: $105-180 per person
Registration: www.lakelouisecommunity.org
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