Camp Fire Girls board the Sammy at NE 39th and Glisan in Portland

The 1950 brochure asks the question, "What Do We Do?"

It also states: "Nondenominational church services are held Sundays at Namanu and evening services on Thursdays. Arrangements are made for Catholic girls to attend Mass."

Sometime in the early 1950s a ceremony was introduced, dream cake, that quickly became a Camp Namanu tradition. At the end of the banquet, after Forest Echoes, small pieces of white cake with candles were passed to everyone in Raker Lodge. The candles were lit and the lights turned out. Someone would read a poem and then everyone sang a song together. Campers made a wish for Camp Namanu and blew out their candle. This tradition was a poignant and fitting close to banquet. A popular poem was:

Many campers and former campers were sad to see Raker Lodge torn down. Twenty-seven years of happy memories permeated the aging rafters.

Construction on the new dining hall was begun in early 1952 on the same site as the old lodge. It was completed by the beginning of the summer and dedicated on June 22, at the annual family day picnic. The Oregonian announces the opening of the camping season:
"Camp Namanu, Camp Fire Girls’ summer camp on the Sandy River, will roll out the welcome mat Sunday for 190 girls, according to Miss Dorothy M. Preuss, Executive Director for the Portland Council.

"Raker Lodge, the new dining hall built this spring, will offer many surprises for the hundreds of campers already registered for the eight sessions of the 1952 season. An automatic dishwasher, shiny stainless steel-equipped kitchens, serving dollies, knotty pine tables and two large fireplaces are among the special features of the new building.

"Buses will leave for camp on a different day and from a new location this year. They will leave Sunday at 2 PM from Holladay Park at NE Thirteenth and Multnomah, and will return Saturday at 4 PM to Holladay Park."

During the first week of camp, a group of counselors noticed that something was missing in the new Raker Lodge. An old bottle of Worcestershire Sauce, home of Gertrude, had held residence in the rafters of the old lodge. Gertrude was a fairy whose job it was to watch campers eating and strike with a stomach ache those who ate too fast or too much. Apparently, Gertrude’s bottle had been lost in the demolition of Raker Lodge.

"I think it might have been during pre-camp training or the first week of camp, two or three of us went up toward the mountain to go to dinner one night. Of course you always had steak if you went to dinner and you were a camp counselor. When we were through, we ‘requisitioned’ the bottle of Worcestershire Sauce that was on our table. We took it up to the counter and asked them how much they wanted for it! They said, ‘Take it away, it’s alright, just go quietly!’

"So we had a ceremony at the next banquet and installed Gertrude. Of course, there were no rafters in the new building, and so we had to hang her from a light fixture."
-Virginia Denton

At the end of that summer, Blue Wing staff had a special surprise for Camp Namanu:
"The last night arrived. We all gathered around our evening fire in Blue Wing Lodge for the unveiling of a mural of Winnie the Pooh painted by the Blue Wing counselors during the summer as a gift and token of affection to all the Blue Birds that came to camp this season and as a greeting to all who come in the years to follow." -Thelma Vandervlugt, Blue Wing Unit Report

In the early spring of 1953, Camp Fire Girls hired Miss Virginia Denton as Director of Camping. She had served ably as Assistant Director the previous summer and brought her skill and enthusiasm to the new position.

At the first banquet of the summer, Joan Hartke, toastmistress, kicked off Camp Namanu’s thirtieth birthday celebration:

"A house without a family is only a building, but a house with its family becomes a home - and so Camp Namanu welcomes you, its family, on its thirtieth birthday of being a home to hundreds of campers.

"We of the first session have laid the foundation for those who will enjoy camping during this summer. We have worn down the paths, warmed up Raker’s benches, and taken the chill off the swimming hole - so a hearty welcome to all of you."

An exciting development this summer was the launching of a new Counselor-in-Training program. This was advertised to be a "practical training course for future Camp Fire camp counselors" and was open to girls who had completed their junior or senior year in high school. It was planned as a two-year course with four weeks of training each summer. Two early CITs describe their experiences:
"Pat Evans was our director. The very first day she sat us down and went through the whole history of camp--that was where she started. Our counselor kept us going from morning to night in sessions and after dinner we would end up in Uncle Toby’s for more. We sat out in the meadow when the weather was good, on our sit-upons. Miss Pat was from the East Coast, with very eastern habits and ideas--serviettes instead of napkins and she carried an umbrella across the meadow. We thought she was really quite an oddity. In later years we really appreciated the sessions we had, but at the time we thought we were really being worked hard." -Teddy Tethrow and Lynn McCracken

The CITs went on a Sammy trip that summer to Phlox Point:
"At that time overnights did not include tents, so we went out and just spread our sleeping bags on tarps on the ground. During the day Wanda and I had put our sleeping bags out in the sun in the afternoon and so that night we were sleeping a little away from the others. During the night a bear came and decided to try to pull our tarp away. We joined the others really fast! We did find the tarp down over the bank the next day, I remember that."

The CITs lived in tents at the western edge of the meadow. They worked on all the skills they would need as counselors, including leading morning sing, planning Cathedral and Council Fire, and learning outdoor cookery.

"My favorite part was that we cooked a lot. We had to learn to emu and every other kind of cooking that the kids did. For our graduation we got to pick what we wanted to do and so we planked salmon. It was superb!"
-Lynn McCracken

"We wore whites for banquet like the counselors. We also got to foot or head tables if there weren’t enough counselors. That was a big deal at the time! We could start songs. We also poured coffee, and we had to pour Miss Ginny's first, that was the tradition. The highlight of CIT training was getting our staff ties at graduation.

"Our CIT group chose the song ‘The Angels Are Lighting’ as our night song. Miss Pat loved poetry and she introduced the idea of a Magic Ring [a small notebook of songs and poems] to Camp Namanu. That was a big thing with our group."
-Teddy Tethrow

1953 was the last summer of the Camp Namanu Post Office. The address was changed to Camp Namanu, Sandy, Oregon.

The 1954 camp brochure announced one of the biggest changes in Camp Namanu’s history:
"A swimming pool at Namanu has long been our cherished dream. This year, that dream will come true.

"The pool, which will be completed by the opening of the camping season, will be regulation length. On either side are wings providing large areas of shallow water for beginners."

The beautiful new 165,000-gallon pool, advertised as one of the largest outdoor pools in the state, meant that girls would no longer walk down the Gypsy Trail to swim in the chilly Sandy. Water for the pool was supplied by a new water line from up Walker Creek.

In spite of the very wet weather that summer, the pool was quite a popular place, particularly for night swims when the underwater lights were turned on.

In 1955, the units at camp were restructured so that Kiwanis was a 7th grade unit, leaving Robin Hill exclusively to 6th graders. In order to keep up with the space demand, a new unit, Tepee, was developed and opened:
"The Tepee Unit with real Indian Tepees and an outdoor fireplace will be ready this summer for girls who will be in the 8th grade in September. Girls of this age may register for either Pioneer or the Tepee Unit."
-Camp Brochure, 1955

Four tepees were clustered around a central area with room for twelve campers and two counselors.

"Some of the unique program activities carried out successfully in the Tepee Unit were making a Navajo loom and weaving straw sit-upons, making fishing poles and then taking fishing trips, learning native dances, and having a bean hole. In addition, the Tepee Unit program included improving this new unit with lashing and making a fire ring."
-Nancy Hooper, Tepee Unit Head

The small size and unique theme of the unit helped to engender its popularity.

"Tepee was a great place to be and we had some really good kids up there. There were only twelve kids, which was neat because you really got to know them. Sleeping in the tepees was really the coolest. One evening a week we would let the campers start their own little fires in the tepees. You just made sure the flap was open and the smoke would go straight up. It was hard to get them started so the counselor in charge usually ended up helping everyone. They had to be kept small, obviously, for safety reasons, but the kids thought it was just too cool."
-Nancy Weigel Jaureguy

Mr. Harry Prideaux, Chairman of the Namanu Committee, was at a meeting when he noticed a medallion worn by a staff member. The counselor was Mary Lou Pierson and she wore a necklace given to her when she worked at Camp Sweyolaken, Spokane Camp Fire’s summer camp. Mr. Prideaux felt that Namanu needed its own medallion, and so Jean Brownell, who was on the Camping Committee, created the Namanu symbolgram. The trees represent the three Wohelo trees, the wavy line is the Sandy River and the other symbol represents the five-toed beaver. At the end of the summer, Miss Ginny received a ring with the new symbol engraved on it and the counselors received a medallion on a necklace.

In the 1950s nearly every camper was also a Camp Fire Girl and so ceremonials continued to be an important part of each week. At least once during every session, a ceremonial Council Fire was held. Younger girls dressed in their Camp Fire uniforms and older girls in their ceremonial gowns and beaded headbands. The entire camp walked in procession to where the North Fork Trail branched off of the camp road. The call of Wohelo would come through the woods and the assembled campers would answer in kind. The drums would begin and the girls would sing "Kahinto Kamya" as they walked up the trail and circled the Council Fire ring. Council Fire usually included a candle lighting ceremony:
"I light the light of Work. We glorify work because through work we are free. Wohelo means Work.

"I light the light of Health. We hold on to health because through health we serve and are happy. Wohelo means Health.

"I light the light of Love. Love is the joy of service so deep that self is forgotten. Wohelo means Love."

Each unit sang songs and honors were given out. Often girls would receive their Torchbearer candles at Council Fire. At the close of the evening the candles would be extinguished and the girls would stand and form a friendship circle and sing "The Call of the Fire." Then the notes of the bugle playing "Taps" would ring through the darkness and the campers would leave singing quietly:

By the beginning of July the Star House was completed. This structure was built in honor of Elaine Gorham, former Camp Director, who had died suddenly in 1956. The Star House was equipped with a 2.4 unitron telescope so that campers could study the heavens far away from city lights. Woodcarvings of the signs of the Zodiac, donated by Lawrence Espinosa, decorated the outside of the structure. A dedication ceremony was held after dark on Tuesday, July 2, with Espinosa’s granddaughter, Aleta Loftis, cutting the ribbon. Star-gazing sessions were very popular all summer with campers in Tepee, Pioneer and Balagan.

In addition to the counselors and unit directors, Camp Namanu has been blessed with many talented and dedicated support staff members. These include craft directors, kitchen staff and caretakers. In the late 1950s the Camp Namanu caretaker was Dwight Tangeman. Nancy Weigel Jaureguy, a camper at that time, remembers Dwight:
"He was so great and everybody just loved him because he was so good-natured. I was a Rancher when he was there and we thought he was so cool. He would take us all up to the Ranch in the Sammy ruck and in those days it wasn’t paved all the way up. We would go up the road the first night after dark, and if the moon was right it was almost like daylight and you could look out and see all the deer grazing in the pastures up there. There was that one steep corner half way up and we’d be in the back of the Sammy and every time he would try to make it. But it was just too steep to get around it and so he would have to stop and back up and then go on up. And we’d be singing our heads off all the way up."

For years, all the paperwork that needed to be done at camp was done either on the floor in Glad House, or among the noise and clutter of Guardians. As time went by, the need for an administration building became more and more apparent, and so this announcement came in the spring of 1958:
"Brooks Manchester, Chairman of Camp Fire Girls’ Namanu committee, announces construction has begun on a new administration building for Namanu, their resident camp east of Portland on the Sandy River.

"Harold Boone, an architect, designed the rustic building which will be approximately 20' x 36' and will provide office area, a small conference room, a guest room and bathroom facilities. The office quarters will include a fireplace and shelf space for a library."
-Oregon Journal

The building, built at the Crossroads near Raker Lodge, was ready for the summer season and was named Spruce Lodge. Later on it was realized that there were no spruce trees growing at Camp Namanu, so Ginny Denton planted one across the road up Robin Hill from the new building.

As the decade came to a close, Miss Ginny’s consistent leadership was a great benefit to the staff and thus to the campers of Camp Namanu. In 1959, more than 50% of the counselors were returning staff, including most of the Unit Directors and support staff. Camper attendance was at an all-time high of over 2,000 different girls that summer.

Full-unabridged text of this chapter is available in the 75th Anniversary Book which is for sale at the Camp Fire USA Portland Metro Council's office in Portland.
©1998 Reprinting only with written permission of Camp Fire USA Portland Metro Council.