Early Chicagoland Horizon

When I started attending the Chicagoland Muscular Dystrophy Summer Camp in 1969 there already was a tradition of a loosely-organized gathering at Oak Street Beach on Chicago’s near-north side on a Saturday soon after camp ended.  Afterwards, there were a few parties the rest of the year, some of them hosted by MDA itself.  In the early 1970s, a group of volunteers, in their late teens and early twenties, began to be more active in organizing parties and outings throughout the summer and occasionally at times during the rest of the year.  Outings included trips to Wrigley Field and Ravinia, the home of an annual summertime music festival of concerts.  The initial leaders of this group included Jimmy Liptak, Rich Westley, Ron Balsamo, Marion Liptak, and Danny Martin, and regular participants included Bob Medrala, the Angelico`s, and me, Rick Balsamo.  A day’s outing could be a long affair when including the hours needed for pick up and drop off of campers living all over Chicagoland and the travel to and from the destination.

At some point in, I think, the mid-1970s, the leaders began to formalize the group and its mission.  My brother Ron writes that "Horizon was originally called 'Horizon for the Handicapped'.  I got the idea ... from [the book] The Little Prince and its reference to the horizon."  Soon it was referred to as the Horizon Association.  Not long afterwards it was established as a registered non-profit to facilitate fund raising and stability.  If I recall correctly, when it came time to register the organization, the name “Horizon Association” was already taken so it was established as “Association of Horizon.” 

One of the earliest and regular Horizon activities was a winter camp, which for years usually consisted of at least a few sleep-over days ending on New Year’s Day.  The first of these was in 1976 at Camp Villa Marie on Pistakee Lake, in the Chain-O-Lakes area of Northern Illinois northwest of Chicago.  The camp was owned and run by the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, and consisted of a number of heated, well-insulated smaller buildings with bedrooms in addition to a large dining hall as well as a main building and activity center.  I had gone on a retreat there in high school and I was familiar with the place, and made the arrangements to use it for almost a week between Christmas and New Year’s day.  The Archdiocese couldn’t have been nicer or made it easier.  All they required of us was to leave it as clean as when we arrived.  We brought our own food and shared kitchen and clean up duties.  The New Year’s Eve party was fantastic, with many more people driving up from Chicago for the day and night just for the party.  That camp was the beginning of Horizon camps which have continued to all the way up to the present.

After a nice run (? six years or so), at some point Horizon Camp was not able to return to Camp Villa Marie and an alternative needed to be found.  Someone then secured a large retreat house owned by an order of Catholic Brothers, located of all places on the other side of Pistakee Lake from Camp Villa Marie.  There was no large room suitable for a large party, and I think at that point the annual Horizon New Year's Eve parties came to an end.  The retreat house was a large mansion with some upstairs bedrooms and large rooms downstairs.  To the best of my memory, Horizon ran many weekend camps at this location in summer and early fall, and I remember swimming in the lake there.  It was a loose atmosphere with people coming and going, some staying for hours and some for days.  A couple of memories stand out.  My brother Ron would cook up a massive amount of pasta and sauce that became famous as "Ron's spaghetti", and Jimmy Liptak or Rich Westley would drive the big, old panel truck (that the Liptaks graciously acquired for Horizon's use) filled with us campers over to the Dairy Queen for ice cream.     

For many years now Horizon has hosted a week-long summer camp, held for some time now at a campsite on Lake Bloomington just north of Normal, Illinois.   

Rick Balsamo  

[Last updated June 9, 2014]

The Chicagoland Muscular Dystrophy Camp

The Chicagoland Muscular Dystrophy Camps began, according to long-time camper Steve Foltz, in 1960.  They were, and continue to be, run by the Muscular Dystrophy Association, which ran week-long residential summer camps all over the country for children (and, at first and for a while, adults) with muscular dystrophy and related disorders.  Every physically disabled person, referred to as “campers”, was assigned a full-time volunteer helper, or “attendant”, for the week.  There were additional volunteers assigned to activities such as the swimming (pool), boating, sports, arts and crafts, as well as to the administrative and medical staffs.  In the camps I attended, the number of campers ranged from about 50 to 100, with perhaps 1 ½ times more volunteers, all spread out on a large campsite with many cabins for sleeping and many activity buildings. 

The Chicagoland MDA camps began using campsites in the Chicago area, but by the time of my first year in 1969 the site had moved to a camp near Kalamazoo, Michigan, necessitating travel via a fleet of buses loaded up on Michigan Avenue a couple blocks south of Congress Street opposite Grant Park.  It was quite a production to behold.  In 1971 the camp was moved to Camp Ravenswood, a YMCA camp located on Lake Hastings near Lake Villa, Illinois, not too far south of the Wisconsin border and an easier drive from Chicago.  The MD Association continued to use both Ravenswood camps, East and occasionally West, as well as neighboring Camp Hastings, also run by the YMCA, until, sometime, I think, in the early 2000s (I’ll need to verify this).  For a few years starting in 1971, the Chicagoland and Milwaukee –area camps were combined, making the camp even larger still.  Multiple campsites were needed as the number of attendees grew, and for at least a couple of decades there were two week-long camps back-to-back to accommodate all the campers who wished to attend the week-long sessions.  Campers could attend only for one week, but volunteers, when shortages existed (which was usually the case for males), could attend both weekly sessions if they wished. 

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In the 1981 edition of the MDA Camp Hastings newspaper, titled “Hastings Hustler,” camper Steve Foltz summarized the camp chronology, mentioning that it was his twentieth camping season:

1960: the first Chicagoland MDA camp at Camp Shady Oaks near Lockport, Illinois.  There were 30 campers for five days.  There were four female attendants for the 12 kids in my cabin.  My favorite activities were catching grasshoppers and getting good night kisses.

1961:  Same camp.  Sonja Trefz broke the sex barrier as the first female camper.  It was cold.

1962:  At the much-bigger Camp Reinberg, Palatine, Illinois.  We piled into a dump truck to go swimming at a private home.

1963:  Same camp.  I started hearing words my parents never used.  We had individual attendants.

1964:  Same camp.  We went fishing in the forest preserve, catching minnow-sized fish.

1965 & 1966:  Missed camp to take correspondence courses.

1967:  At Camp Lake of the Woods & Camp Greenwoods in Decatur, Michigan.  I did a skit in drag getting a pie in the face.  I never dressed in drag again.

1968:  Same camp.  We build and launched rockets – a great activity.     

1969:  Same camp.  Started my girl-chasing career in earnest.  Expect to start my girl-catching career any day now.

1970:  Last year in Michigan.  Had a ball at the Kalamazoo County Fair.

1971:  Camp moved to Camp Ravenswood East [near Lake Villa, Illinois].  The camp included people from Milwaukee.

1972:  My week was at Camp Hastings.  I started to like nurses a lot.

1973 to 1981:  At Camp Hastings.  Modern camp as we now know it began to take shape.  Such innovations as kissing raids, Western Night, and Friendship Night started.  King Jake rules as our just monarch.  Warm fuzzies debuted.  Camp got better every year.  Over the past ten years there has been a revolution in attitudes.  We who started as victims became patients, campers, and finally human beings.  Stay tuned for my next article around 2001.

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The Muscular Dystrophy Association Chicagoland camp continues through the present, held in recent years at the same camp used by Horizon – Timber Pointe, on Lake Bloomington, just north of Bloomington Illinois, owned and operated by the Easter Seals Central Illinois.     
       

Rick Balsamo
[Updated June 9, 2014]

About This Site

My name is Rick Balsamo.  For many years, essentially 1969-1990,  I was involved as a volunteer with the camping and other social activities of the Chicagoland Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) and the organization that became the Association of Horizon, a non-profit providing social activities for the disabled that was started by MDA volunteers. 
 

Over the years I took a lot of photographs, as did many others, and as well many hours of tape recordings of camp skits and songs.  Now that I’m older, slower, and grayer, with kids pretty grown up, I find myself with the time to do more things – like make my photos and recordings more accessible to others and document some history along the way.  This project will take a while, as scanning old photos can be tedious.  But I know that many others enjoy seeing old photo as much as I do, as they conger up fond memories of good times and old friends, those still with us and those who have passed on.       

So through this effort I hope to preserve and refresh memories, for the enjoyment of those of us who lived them and for our families, friends, and others who might find them of interest.  I have been very fortunate to have had these experiences and these friendships that have significantly shaped my life.

Some Technical Comments:

All these photos can be copied by visitors for their personal, non-commercial use – I ask only that those who do such consider a (tax deductible!) donation to the Association of Horizon (link) to support its wonderful ongoing work.  All photos are copyrighted, and are mine unless otherwise indicated. 
 

I anticipate that it will take me a long time to get all my photos and other material up on this site, so revisit periodically to see what’s been added.  Whether this particular vehicle, a Blogger blog, is the best for my purposes will remain to be seen; I suppose at some point it may be necessary to change to something different. 
 

I’ll try to remember to amend the original post with any additional information that fills in details I missed at first.   
 

I’ll try to tag each photo with a number of labels so that all posts with a specific theme can be viewed as a group.  For individuals that will appear a lot in photos, I’ll tag their last name. 

Rick Balsamo