Horizon's First Camp: 1976

The first Horizon camp was held in December, 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, smaller bedroom buildings plus a large mess hall and a main activity center.  A little more detail is provided here.  I didn’t take very many pictures, but I used my new 35mm Canon camera.  Out was my beat up old Kodak Instamatic, with its fixed focal length, and in with the new.  Color film was a little too expensive while I learned, but here are my first few efforts.  It looks like we could have used a little more heat.


Visnu Saengmani, Mike Jarrett, and Kathy Sheehan

One year at Horizon Winter Camp (although I'm pretty sure it was not this first year), Rich Westley and I were there for the whole time, about five days as I recall.  We handled a cabin with about five or six disabled guys, helped out occasionally by some able-bodied guys who would be crashing there for a day or too.  One of our cabin mates was Vishnu, who for reasons unknown to science and lost in time needed frequent trips to the bathroom, an experience that was particularly unpleasant for all involved.  In calling out to either Rich or me for help, he would enjoy taunting us with "Ri...Ri...Ri..." before finishing with either Ri...chie or Ri...cky.  It became quite a laugh, although not anywhere as funny then as it is now, and I am sure I can speak for Rich as well as myself in saying that if we ever find ourselves inebriated in the same place together we could reenact the whole course but farcical affair quite faithfully to the original.  

Marian Liptak, Colleen Hoening, & Phil Macak, with Aaron Adams off on the right

Mike Engels

Aaron Adams

Mike Jarrett sitting on right

Johnny Abell

Mike ?Herzovi

Johnny Angelico & Rich Westley taking bets on the 5th at Arlington, with Dave Boffo in foreground and ? Mike Ervin on far left 

Some Horizon Old-Timers – Still Camping After All These Years

How great it is that the Association of Horizon, dedicated to helping those with physical disabilities, has prospered so over the years, due in great part to the dedication and effort of those volunteers who have stepped up, and continue to step up, to lead the organization and get all the behind-the-scenes hard work done.  The vision of our dear departed friend Jimmy Liptak and others lives on.  It has been especially gratifying to me that my daughter Christina has been volunteering at Horizon Camp in recent years and when visiting camp lately I have had the opportunity to see again so many old friends. 

I've got some old pictures of some individuals, many long-time leaders in Horizon, who have attended a recent Horizon Camp.  I don't have the "now" pictures, but I have the "then" ones -- it's fun to look back and reminisce.

From MDA Camp Hastings 1986:  Kim Peterson & Mike Engels; Mike has been in Horizon from the very beginning.

From MDA Camp Hastings 1986: Caught in a time warp, Mary Weiss (Angelico) & Tim Beard


From MDA Camp Hastings 1983: Mark Rozdolsky & Mike Trimpe

From MDA Camp Hastings 1987: Bob Schumacher and Terry Rozdolsky

From MDA Camp Hastings 1987: Loretta Martin, Freddy Martin, & Kathy Kingston.  Loretta and Kathy are also in some kind of mysterious time warp where they don't look any different today than they did then.  Hey, Freddy looks the same today too just with a little less hair [Edit: OK, a lot less hair]; also note that Freddy apparently had a wardrobe malfunction and is holding his shirt together with a safety pin.

From MDA Camp Hastings 1983: Lea Svihla and Tammie Gibson.

From MDA Camp Hastings 1983: Terry Walsh (right) with a little friend.

From MDA Camp Hastings 1987: John Walsh, also with a good head of hair, with Nicky Biango.

From MDA Camp Hastings 1984: Irene Roach & Danny Martin

[Note: 1/25/2016: Attempting to insert a photo to this post, I messed up the formatting and had to reconfigure to get it to work again.  I'll leave well enough alone and add that photo somewhere else.  RB]

Horizon in Aurora, Summer 1975

With our hearts and minds reveling in sights and sounds of Jimmy Liptak, the service organization Association of Horizon, which he co-founded, looms large.  The first "official" Horizon outing for which I have pictures (which I labeled at the time as "Horizon") is a Summer 1975 gathering in Aurora, first to what I recall as a railroad museum and later to a party at, also if I recall correctly, Jeff Ellis's house which was close by.  For once Jimmy didn't have to drive back and forth from Cicero to Aurora to pick up and later drop off Jeff, who, by the way, was not lightly built, to take him to a party that was, invariably, somewhere far away.  This outing pre-dates the first Horizon Camp, which was late December 1976 at Camp Villa Marie on Pistakee Lake in Northern Illinois.  Here are some pictures, in memory of Jimmy, and, as well, all our many other friends here who have far too soon gone before us:

(L to R:)  Ron Balsamo, Jeff Ellis, Jimmy Liptak, Dave Boffo, and Aaron Adams.

The Angelico`s showed up in force.  Sitting on Jay Serota's lap is Louise Angelico, and the skinny guy off to the right is, believe it or not, Johnny Angelico.

 
Finding an open place to sit down for a moment, in the wheelchair on the left is Mike Angelico, with (from L to R) Diane Wilferd, Timmy Sullivan, and an unidentified female (help please).  Note the Angelico brothers are both wearing bib overalls, the significance of which has been lost in the sands of time.

(L to R:)  Jay Serota, unidentified male standing, Phil Macak, and Steve Foltz.

(L to R:) Rick Balsamo and Aaron Adams

In the background is Louise Angelico talking with an unidentified man in front of a VW Microbus.  Foreground from L to R: With her head turned away from the camera is Helen Zaricor, then Mike Engels, unidentified male, Jeff  Hewitt, and, far to the right, Johnny Angelico, still wearing his bibs.  At the center of the scene, which was wherever Jimmy was, wearing his distinctive Converse All-Stars, is the One and Only Jimmy Liptak.

Rick Balsamo

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]