MEMORIES: ETHEL TIEDEMANN

​Ethel Tiedemann brought an autograph album with her when she went to Camp Julia Crowell the first year it was open.  

North Ridgeville resident Phil Ozocho found the album in a thrift store years ago. “I found it on a shelf filled with old grammar books, in the shop's closet. Thumbing through it, I saw drawings, poems, and messages, all dated from the late thirties. When I read it later, connections between different pages started forming a story you could piece together from little details and relationships, especially all of the 1937 summer entries that made up half the book, where camp mates would leave jokes and their camp nicknames, where their hometowns were, and so on.”  He looked up Camp Julia Crowell (CJC) online, but didn’t find much at the time. Later he checked back and found the Friends of Crowell Hilaka website. There he found a photo of CJC campers from 1937. The names on the back of the picture matched the names in his album. 

Camp autograph book, 1937

"Camp Julia Crowell 1937. First year"
Top row - left to right: March, Splash, Meta, [blank], Sandy, Jerry, Bill, Russet, Piper, Kinta, Downy
Middle row - Dinkle, Jala, Wee-Soo, Sola, Robin, Tuck, Tim, Pixie, Eliska
Bottom Row - Phoebe, Penny, Buddy, Nicky

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​“Even without all of the context I have now, it's a surprising view into someone's life from seventy something years back, and all of their personalities show up on the page.”
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Phil generously decided to donate the album to FoCH so we can share it with the world. As soon as time allows, the full album will be scanned and linked into the 1937 entry of the property timeline on the FoCH website.  THANK YOU,  PHIL! 

- This article first appeared in the FoCHlore Blog for the RJRD website