Irving “Skipper” and Loretta Kuklin

Skipper had to quit school because of the Depression and made his living in Vaudeville dancing on roller skates and clowning as a “Straight Man” to comedians. Sometimes on rainy days he would put on his roller skates and entertain the campers in the Rec Hall. After years away from the circuit Skipper could still put on a show.

Drafted into the U.S. Army he spent the years of WW II in the trenches, as he put it. Skipper never talked about his war adventures as is the case of many veterans. The GI Bill offered him a chance to get a college degree. He chose to get a teacher's license. On the day of his graduation Skipper was called to the Dean of Education office. The Dean informed him that in spite of placing high in the class, he did not qualify for graduation. As he did not finish high school he did not have the required diploma. Feeling that all his hard work had been for nothing there was a knot in his stomach. Then the Dean told him he could graduate if he took a GED test and passed. That morning he took the test, got it graded and in the afternoon graduated from college. Ripley's Believe it or Not added Skipper's name to a long list of strange event as the “Man Who Graduated High School and College on the same day”. A yellowing copy of this was on the Rec Hall bulletin board until it fell apart.

As an Industrial Arts teacher in the Chicago area, he spent his summers as a counselor at a sports camp in northern Wisconsin. That is where he learned the ins and outs of managing a summer camp. Seeing first-hand how summer camp helped young men become accomplished adults, Skipper wanted to build a camp of his own.

Skipper and Joe Rosen put together a partnership and looked for a site to establish a summer camp in all parts of Wisconsin. A real estate ad in a Chicago newspaper for a farm near Waupaca with a large lake front caught their eye. As soon as they could get there to look the farm over they were walking the grounds that would become Camp Waupaca. “It was love at first sight,” Skipper told me. The put an earnest payment down at that visit although where and how to get a mortgage and money to build was not yet worked out.

The partnership worked out as each partner had skills and experience the other needed. With all his years of camp experience, Skipper was the Program Director. Joe was the Personnel Director. Their wives also used their expertise to make the camp a smooth operation.

Skipper worked closely with the campers who had trouble adjusting to being away from home, personality conflicts, or physical problems. He took on some hard case boys and worked with them personally as well as coaching their cabin counselors how to help them. There was strong but fair discipline for either camper of counselor. A counselor who was out of line did not want to take a trip in a car to the far fields for a talk with Skipper and Joe.

Loretta was a home economics teacher and so she was in charge of the kitchen and food preparation. Although the camp dilation made up balanced menus it was Loretta that made sure that all food was prepared properly. Often she would have the cooks prepare a sample amount that was tasted by a counselor who was passing by the kitchen and her. If it did not get a recommendation, that recipe would not be used.

At the weekly Counselor Meetings Loretta and the nurse at the time gave the counselors a lecture on keeping the campers healthy. Mostly the lectures were on how to tell each camper was brushing their teeth daily, making sure that they are a balanced diet, signs of campers getting over heated, and there was a daily change of underwear. There were also warnings of not showering with the campers (no reasons given), but to wash their backs for them. When Loretta stood up at a meeting the counselors knew they would get a double lecture. It seemed that each week another possible breach of health care would be presented. There was never any doubt that there was a very active concern for the counselors and campers well-being.