|
History
SUMMARY
While most ventures are the result of
careful planning, summer programs for boys being no exception, the
Berwick Boys Foundation sprang into being spontaneously. Two
struggling young doctors, Dr. H. Meredith Berry and Dr. Walter Wichern
("Doc" and "Wick" as we know them) however have drawn upon their
experiences with programs such as the Boys Scouts of America and the Big
Brother Program, to guide the growth of the Berwick program which began
so unexpectedly some nearly 60 years ago. The result has been the
growth which has assumed the use of a 750 acre island two miles off the
coast of Maine where teenage boys build and direct their own camp and
learn the necessity of cooperation for survival.
GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE
The two doctors met in New York City in
1946 at Roosevelt Hospital. Doc had just returned from World War II
service as a Major and a Surgeon and Wick was serving his term as an
Intern. Although Doc was Wick's immediate superior, he had been away
from organized medicine for three and a half years, and the younger Wick
was more thoroughly acquainted with new medicines and procedures.
Consequently, the two worked closely, each benefiting from the other.
Outside their duties they also found much in common. Both felt stifled
by the City because they had been familiar with outdoor life and the
pleasures of hunting and fishing. Doc had spent his summers as a boy on
a lake in Pennsylvania and later became active with the Boys Scouts
program and a summer camp on Long Island. Dr. Wichern had spent one
summer on Forbes Island working with a professor of anatomy who was
making a study of deer antlers. In medical school, Wick had studied and
spent leisure time on Naushon Island off Cape Cod. Such mutual interests
led the two to search for a place where they could escape the city, hunt
fish, and "raise Cain" where nobody would be bothered and where nobody
would bother them. Such conditions meant owning a lake and the
surrounding shoreline or an island. In summer during their two week
vacation, they began their search for a place where they could relax in
piece and quiet.
To find an Island, the two doctors began searching the newspaper
advertisements, as real estate listings were too expensive. At long last
they saw an advertisement "For Sale: Dyer Island off the coast of Maine,
owned by the Maine Seaboard Paper Company. Pulp wood supply has been
cut. Will sell the 1000 acres." Correspondence went back and forth until
the young doctors who were making a combined income of $50/month, agreed
to pay twenty five dollars each on a ten year lease towards buying their
dream island.
After much futile searching for a site they found the Maine
Seaboard Company listed in the yellow pages of the New York Phone book.
A phone call revealed the existence of an available piece of real
estate, Dyer Island in Harrington, Maine.
It was on Dyer Island that the doctors began formulating ideas.
Dr. Berry was already interested in the Big Brother program, which was
natural to him because his parents who were teachers often brought home
to their table boys having difficulty with their studies or with
classmates.
Through the Big Brother Program, the Doctors became interested
in a boy whose past-time was running away from home. They decided to put
him on the Island for the summer.
IN THE BEGINNING
With a small boat and motor, an ax, a tent
and a few supplies, the boy moved to Dyer Island during the summer of
1948. At the same time Doc was moving to the Lahey clinic in Boston,
close enough to make weekend trips to the Island, which he did about
every two weeks. Usually Doc would go up on Saturday afternoon returning
the following day. Wick who was serving in the army made the suggestion
that the boy could spend his time preparing logs and a site for a cabin.
Following Wick's advice, Doc and the boy would spend their Sundays
together carrying logs that he had cut and spudded out of the woods and
into clearing.
By the end of the summer, the boy was sorry to have to leave and was
anxious to return the following year to complete the cabin. Doc said
that he could do that only if he returned to school and showed some
improvement. Both of these he did. The success of that summer suggested
that perhaps a program could be organized for a group of boys to spend
the summer on the island to construct living quarters and to organize
and manage their own program. Through the winter of 1948-1949, Doc
searched for boys in New York and Boston who would be interested in such
a program.
The doctors were jubilant over their
first experiment with a little brother. Putting their heads and hearts
together the question was, "Why keep the island for their own peace and
quiet? Let's give it to deserving boys rich and poor alike who need help
growing up." In 1949, they hammered so effectively on their idea that 10
boys from the Boston area and some from New York were brought to Dyer
Island for summer camping. The project was financed primarily by doctors
at Roosevelt Hospital and other concerned individuals. Camp Berwick was
nailed firmly on the map as a sensible place for boys who will develop
through hard physical exertion, special counseling and few dull moments.
When June of 1949 arrived, ten boys, 4 from New York, 5 from Boston,
and one from Pennsylvania were ready to spend the summer in Maine. The
organization Berwick, a name derived from the contraction of the names
of the two founders, had purchased an old Boston police boat and with
other equipment much of which was donated, the group embarked for Maine.
At the time, Doc had completed his fellowship at the Lahey clinic in
Boston and before moving to Brockton, at the Goddard Hospital, he had
most of the summer free. He persuaded a former boys scout from Doc's
Long Island days to spend the summer on the island to help oversee the
project.
THE MAKING OF CAMP
With a balsa wood model of the cabin they planned to build plus a few
sketches, the group launched their project. The purpose of the project
was threefold: to achieve a goal through hard work, to learn to work and
live with others and to instill a sense of responsibility and
cooperation among the group. Each boy had the opportunity to build a
cabin of his own. He would thus aim for a personal goal as well as the
cooperative goal of building a central lodge. Thus was the time to be
divided in half. However, as the group realized the time consuming
difficulty to their cooperative task the dividing line of the work
schedule occurred at about dusk on weekdays and Saturdays, with Sunday
reserved for worship and personal projects.
Everything that arrived on the island had to be carried by hand
including fresh water. Rocks and sand had to be carried from the beach.
There was no pier, no road from the lobster shack, where the two tents
were, to the work site on the other side of the cover, no tractor, no
cement mixer, no power saw, no electric appliances. The group worked
from after breakfast 7:00 AM to dusk six days a week sometimes with only
half a day on Saturday. About half the group stayed beyond the planned
eight-week period and managed to frame and close in the lodge. Being
able to stay past the normal camp period was considered a privilege and
inspired perhaps even more conscientious work habits than had been
cultivated during the summer.
The success of the summer of 1949 reflected not only in the
completion of the lodge but also in the enthusiasm of the boys to
return. Despite the hard work and primitive conditions, the boys
received rewarding educational experiences both in terms of physical
accomplishments and in learning to live with one another.
These boys were really explorers coming to a totally undeveloped camp
on an island that was furnished only with an abandoned lobster
fisherman's shack. Fortunately, in the decade and a half since the
cutting of the valuable pulpwood another stand of trees had grown up
which were available to the newcomers. There was plenty of sand and rock
and a power boat to bring cement and roofing from the mainland.
Often new ideas required new equipment. When a truck was needed two
boys undaunted, built one at home out of old automobile parts. Sometimes
the camp was used in the winter by small groups of boys led by Dr.
Berry. At Thanksgiving, a crew went up to cut Christmas trees. 1,500
trees were ferried across to the mainland one winter and trucked back to
Brockton and sold. A nursery of seedlings was planted to continue the
supply. An after camp project for a few older boys was picking
blueberries on the mainland where made a good sum of money for their
college expenses. Another activity that used to take place was that Dr.
Berry used to take some of the boys to the island for winter and spring
vacations and taught them how to hunt deer and duck. They learned to
live in low temperatures amid icy and stormy weather. Ingenuity of the
campers is shown frequently in hard to solve problems. For instance when
a heavy tractor was acquired, two scows were tied together to make a
platform ferry to bring it from the mainland.
AND SO IT GOES
Inspiration of Berwick has caused one boy to complete a college
course in wild life conservation, another to study at the museum of
Fine Arts in Boston, several to become industrial engineers. One boy
served six years on a submarine. There are several doctors, college
professors, and architects.
Such deserving
students are awarded scholarships. These are presented at the end of the
summer during the closing lobster banquet, which is attended by parents
and friends.
The younger boys of the camp are chosen by the group leaders
to receive awards according to their progress in functioning under the
Berwick Characteristics. Persistence and Industry, Altruism giving
others a helping hand, sincerity and integrity "his word is good". A
further objective of the doctors was to encourage the boys to accept
courageously whatever happens.
The Berwick Mariner Camp which no longer exists today, was for
still younger boys aged eight to fourteen and was managed by veteran
Berwick Boys on a fee basis to help support the entire project.
The ideas being constantly put into place over the span of
years by the Berwick Boys Foundation are due to personality and unity
of purpose of its founders Dr. Berry and Dr. Wichern. They have poured
into it their money, their concern for boys, and their faith. The boys
who come to this Island find it a haven where they are given a chance
to work out their own solutions.
As the story of Berwick spreads, friends in industry and the
professions have provided many things from stainless steel kitchen
equipment to chain saws, dump trucks, a cement mixer, pumps and
plumbing. A yacht, a sloop, motor boats and sailboats have been
generously donated, sometimes by grateful patients of the found
doctors. Such tools seem to entice the youngsters more than their
standard recreations such as baseball, tennis and swimming. Work
becomes play when it is creative.
Dr. Berry stated that the "best results are gained by not
imposing many rules and regulations but by letting boys feel that they
want to do what is right for themselves and best for others. Berwick
is more than a camp. It's a type of living where problems are faced,
loads are carried, success is shared by working, learning, playing,
and developing attitudes and understanding that can and will make a
contribution to our world. One former Berwick boy said "Berwick is no
longer a puzzlement but a solution to growing up in a big way."
|
