Buckeye Recreation Workshop

Topic: CRS Versions
The Progressive Movement’s interest in the constructive use of leisure time developed in response to the masses from Europe who moved into urban areas where no open spaces existed.  It began in Boston with the Playground Association of America, which provided sandboxes for children.  The year was 1885 [1] and, as the chart shows, the urban population was increasing rapidly from 28% to 35% of the United States total.

The concern spread from children to adults, and, among Populists, culminated in Prohibition in 1920, which closed the gathering places of the poor.  In their stead, settlement houses and other organizations offered alternatives to the amusement parks that sprang up along tram and interurban lines.  Neva Boyd was active with Jane Addams in Chicago’s Hull House. [2]

Meanwhile, as the percentage of urban dwellers rose from 40% to 51% between 1900 and 1920, people in towns and small cities began to worry about their own children.  The Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls were organized in 1910 to send kids back to the country for a few weeks each summer. [3]  As more communities introduced high schools, churches organized activities to promote endogamy among their youth.  Lynn Rohrbough provided an alternative to phonographs and dancing with his social recreation. [4]

Agricultural colleges became concerned that farm life was suffering from the concentration of wealth in urban areas.  The Smith-Lever Act introduced county extension agents and home demonstration agents to spread new ideas about farming and food preservation in 1914. [5]

The youth program, which became 4-H, had its roots in Clark County, Ohio, where A.B. Graham [6] started a Boys’ and Girls’ Agricultural Club in 1902.  In 1916, four Ohio counties hired 4-H agents as part of their extension programs. [7]

One early agent was Bruce Tom in Summit County.  He had been raised on a farm near Zanesville, and taught school [8] after graduating from the Presbyterian’s [9] Muskingum College in 1911. [10]  In 1919, he ran the first 4-H camp in Ohio. [11]

This was the time when many youth organizations, including the Epworth League, were promoting summer institutes in resort settings. [12]  The rationale for 4-H camping differed from that of the Boy Scouts; farm kids did not need to be reconnected with country.  Instead, the camps aimed to supplement rural education with programs that country schools could not provide in areas like biology, music, and athletics. [13]

Tom’s specialty became recreation.  In 1920, he set up a Rural Community Playhouse at the state fair to sponsor daily competitions for fiddlers and dancers. [14]  Later, he was hired by Ohio State University as a rural sociologist.  Stewart Case, a retired extension agent in Colorado, believed that was because “he couldn’t be known as a recreational specialist.  People would not have been willing to pay his salary.” [15]

In 1927, Tom attended Rohrbough’s second Recreation Institute, where he would have met Boyd, along with those mentioned in the post for 12 September 2021. [16]  The next year, he helped open a permanent 4-H camp in Ohio. [17]   He was on the committee that organized the Waldenwoods meetings mentioned in the post for 19 September 2021, [18] then, during World War II, wrote a column on recreation ideas for the National 4-H News magazine. [19]

The Playgrounds and Recreation Association did not get involved because the declining rural population, down to 44% in 1930, was too small and too widely dispersed to support such work.  It was only after the Rockefellers became involved in 1929 that it held 78 recreation institutes in 34 states. [20]  The group, renamed the National Recreation Association in 1930, eventually hired five men to work with rural groups in cooperation with “federal and state extension agencies.”  Its program continued until 1940 when its field director died and World War II became more important. [21]

The U. S. military opted to handle its own recreation needs during the war, rather than relying on outside volunteers as it had during World War I. [22]  Augustus Zanzig was sent to the Treasury Department to help organize events to sell war bonds.  When that concluded in 1943, he went to work for the  Griffith Musical Foundation in Newark, New Jersey as its education director. [23]

The resulting vacuum in national leadership led a group in Westerville to organize its own Northeast Ohio Recreation Institute in 1944.  The workshop at Hiram College attracted Boyd, Rohrbough, and Rohrbough’s former partner, Carl Hutchinson, [24] along with Tom. [25]

The name changed to Buckeye Recreation Workshop in 1948 when it moved to Cuyahoga Falls.  Each day of the week-long institute began with breakfast and devotions, then alternated gym and craft activities.  A tea was held in the afternoon with a short lecture, followed by dinner, and an evening party. [26]

Most of the people who registered were home demonstration agents, but “ministers’ wives, farm women club leaders, and recreation personnel for Campfire Girls, YWCA, churches [and the] Grange” also attended.  E. O Harbin came, [27] but Merrill Davis led the music.  He taught singing in the Jackson, Ohio, public schools.

“Songs went with pretty nearly everything except the craft work and puzzles.  Fine old hymns were a part of each morning’s devotions, or what the church folks might have called a consecration service.

“Songs were sung with folk games, square dances, and at meals and assemblies.  And after a day or two the strains of the more melodious ones came floating through your mind and heart, and seems to help set the tempo and line of your thoughts and feelings.

“One that all of us quickly caught on was the spiritual, ‘When the Spirit Say Sing, I Want to Sing.’  Another was ‘I’ve Got a Home in Beulah Land,’ and a sample of a very neat ditty was ‘Ten Pretty Girls at a Village School’ which was sung to a folkgame.” [28]

The reporter for the National 4-H News did not mention any of the international songs that had been introduced by Zanzig. [29]  While the participants were shown the Varsovienne form of the waltz, the theme was still “Play with a Purpose,” and “not just for fun.” [30]

The workshops spread.  Mary Lea Bailey believed [31] “at least twenty-three labs affected by the Waldenwoods fellowship are still in operation” in the early 1970s. [32]  Allen Smith [33] identified thirteen spawned by the Northland Recreation Laboratory mentioned in the post for 26 September 2021. [34]

So many workshops sprang up that Larry Eisenberg remembered Howie Turner was his “constant companion, in dozens of labs” as they worked the modern equivalent of the chautauqua circuit.  He recalled most were “started and maintained by 4-H leaders. [35]

While some, like Eisenberg, began as invited speakers, [36] they returned as vendors with products to sell.  Bob Nolte recalled Eisenberg arrived at the Northland Recreation Laboratory “with a phonograph, loud speakers and records made for dancing.  Thus was born an era that never ended.” [37]  He was promoting the records and songbooks produced by the Methodist church that are discussed in the post for 9 February 2020.

The 1954 Buckeye Workshop, where “Kumbaya” might have been introduced, did not differ from the ones before.  About 150 registered for the week-long session in an Urbana, Ohio, Methodist church where Rohrbough talked about play-parties.  Other speakers covered “handicrafts, folk dancing, games, party planning, community song leading, camping techniques, and nature experiences.” [38]

The Buckeye workshop continues under the name Buckeye Leadership Workshop as a nonprofit corporation, and is still deeply rooted in the extension service. [39]  This many years after the word “recreation” was created to distinguish it from mere play, [40] the suspicion of things frivolous persists.  A current board member said they had to change the workshop name “for marketability reasons (easier for professionals to get leave to ‘lead’ rather than ‘recreate’).” [41]

Graphics
1.  United States Census Bureau data gathered by Jeff Hoyt.  “1800-1990: Changes In Urban/Rural U.S. Population.”  Senior Living website, 29 June 2021.

2.  “Recreation Labs/Workshops.”  41 in Folklore Village Christmas Festival, Program, 27–31 December 1987, Mount Horeb, Wisconsin.

End Notes
1.  Richard F. Knapp and Charles E. Hartsoe.  Play for America: The National Recreation Association 1906–1965.  Arlington, Virginia: National Recreation and Park Association, 1979.  19–20.

2.  W. Paul Simon.  “Neva Leona Boyd, a Biographical Sketch.”  Virginia Commonwealth University website.  Among those who taught music in settlement houses are Augustus Zanzig in Boston [42] and Martha Ramsey in Cleveland. [43]  George Fenstermacher, who was Dean of Students at Taylor University when Melvin Blake was a student, received his first music training in the Cleveland Music School Settlement.  Once he was on the college faculty, he upgraded his education in Chicago.  For more, see the post for 30 May 2021.

3.  The Boy Scouts of America and Camp Fire Girls are mentioned briefly in note 30 of the post for 5 September 2021.

4.  Social recreation is discussed in the post for 12 September 2021.
5.  Amy Manor.  “Smith-Lever Act.”  North Carolina State University website.

6.  Suzanne Steel.  “A.B. Graham’s Legacy.”  Ohio State University website.  “A.B. stood for Albert Belmont, but ‘he ignored anyone who called him anything but A.B.’.” [44]

7.  “A Look at the History of 4-H in Ohio.”  Farm and Dairy website, 7 February 2002.

8.  Dorothy Montgomery.  “A Look at the History of Camp Ohio.”  Zanesville Times Recorder, Zanesville, Ohio, 15 June 2018.  Tom also is discussed in the posts for 12 September 2021, 19 September 2021, 3 October 2021, and 17 October 2021.

9.  The area was settled by Scots Irish moving west from western Pennsylvania. [45]  Tom’s great-grandfather migrated from Greensburg in Westmoreland County. [46]  While family genealogists have tried to find a Scots ancestor, [47] local historians believe the Thomm family had Lutheran roots. [48]  By the time Robert Bruce Tom was born, his parents had absorbed Scots history.

10.  Nainsí J. Houston, director Muskingum University Roberta A. Smith University Library.  Email, 12 August 2021.

11.  Montgomery.
12.  See the post for 12 September 2021.

13.  Ella Gardner.  Short-Time Camps: A Manual for 4-H Leaders.  Washington, DC: United States Department of Agriculture Extension Service, 1939.  1.  “Many of our rural schools present no music, nature study, recess games, or sheer fun activities.  In many places, isolated homes and a heavy schedule of home and school work make informal social gatherings rare.”  Robert Meadows believes Liberty Hyde Bailey was one of the more vocal critics of rural schools. [49]

14.  Premium List and Rules Governing Awards, Annual Ohio State Fair, Columbus, Ohio.  Columbus: Ohio Department of Agriculture, 1920.

15.  Stewart G. Case.  Interviewed by Dennis McGuire, 15 September 1983.  Mountain Scholar website.  24.

16.  Larry Nial Holcomb.  “A History of the Cooperative Recreation Service.”  PhD dissertation.  University of Michigan, 1972.  37.

17.  Montgomery.  The camp is Camp Ohio.
18.  Holcomb.  40.

19.  “Let’s Play.”  National 4-H News 20:14:June 1942.  The column was “Sociability Lane” and he signed himself “Uncle Tom” Bruce.

20.  Knapp.  99.  He was not more specific than “the Rockefellers.”
21.  Knapp.  95.

22.  Knapp.  129.  See the post for 5 September 2021 for the World War I activities of the Playground and Recreation Association of America.  John Bradford headed the rural workshop program.

23.  “Book Week Program Sunday at Library Augustus D. Zanzig Will Be the Speaker.”  The Montclair Times, Montclair, New Jersey, 9 November 1944.  He is discussed in the posts for 5 September 2021, 19 September 2021, 26 September 2021, and 3 October 2021.

24.  Hutchinson is discussed in the posts for 19 September 2021, 26 September 2021, and 3 October 2021.

25.  Mrs. Oliver Bailey.  Letter to Larry Nial Holcomb, 6 February 1972.  Cited by Holcomb.  87.  Oliver Bracken Bailey was the father-in-law of Mary Lea Bailey. [50]  Presumably, this Mrs. Bailey is Mary Lea’s mother-in-law.  Mary Lea is mentioned below in note 31.

26.  “Play with a Purpose.”  National 4-H News 26:19–21, 24, 26:May 1948.

27.  Harbin’s health failed in 1945, [51] but he continued to attend recreation meetings. [52]  He is discussed in the posts for 9 February 2020, 12 September 2021, 26 September 2021, and 3 October 2021.

28.  Play with a Purpose.  20–21.

29.  Zanzig’s Singing America is mentioned in the post for 26 September 2021.  International songs simply may not have been mentioned, or were not in the repertoire of Merrill Davis.  It is difficult to draw any conclusions from the absence of information, but some already were included in a 1944 Rohrbough songbook described in the post for 9 February 2020.

30.  Play with a Purpose.

31.  Bailey had worked closely with Rohrbough since 1948, [53] and was on the board of the Buckeye Workshop when Holcomb was writing. [54]

32.  Holcomb.  45.  Waldenwoods is discussed in the post for 19 September 2021.

33.  Smith was the “youth manager of Farmland Industries, Inc. of Kansas City, Missouri.” [55]  Despite the shared surname, he does not appear to be related to the Fred Smith who helped found the Northland Rec Lab.

34.  Allan T. Smith.  “Genealogical Chart of Non-profit Recreation Laboratories,” 16 June 1972.  Reprinted by Holcomb.  46.

35.  Larry Eisenberg.  “It’s Me, O Lord.”  Tulsa: Fun Books, 1992.  60.  Turner represented The Handcrafters of Waupun, Wisconsin, who sold craft materials like the flat, plastic-coated lacing used in lanyards.

36.  Eisenberg.  59.  He thought he was invited to Northland Rec Lab in 1940 or 1941.

37.  Bob Nolte.  Northland Recreation Lab: A History.  1984.  21.  Copy provided by Heidi Ryan, 21 June 2016.  The Rec Lab is discussed in the post for 26 September 2021.

38.  Holcomb.  87.  His source was Grace Goulder.  “Ohio Scenes and Citizens.”  Cleveland Plain Dealer, Cleveland, Ohio, 23 May 1954 Sunday supplement.  4.

39.  One of the current board members is a former extension agent and another has a master’s degree in agricultural education. [56]

40.  Knapp.  3.  “At the turn of the century, in contrast, people used the term ‘play’ with much the same connotation that ‘recreation’ would come to hold by the 1930s by which time ‘play’ came to have a popular usage equating it with playgrounds and activities for children.  The switch from ‘play’ to ‘recreation’ for all ages is indicating of the broadening of the concept which took place over the first three decades of this century.”  And hence, the name change for the National Recreation Association as it sought more respect from potential patrons and the government.

41.  John Fark.  Email, 1 November 2020.
42.  See the post for 5 September 2021.
43.  See the post for 9 February 2020.
44.  Her source was his grandson, James Graham.
45.  “A Brief History.”  New Concord, Ohio, website.
46.  “Henry Tom.”  Geni website, 21 November 2014.

47.  Jay Webb Thom and Nelle Bigham Robinson.  The THOM Family: The Descendants of Joseph Thom and Elizabeth Craig Thom of Westmoreland County Pennsylvania.  Franklin, Indiana: 1932.  Copy posted to Wiki Tree website.

48.  Lorle Porter.  A People Set Apart: Scotch-Irish in Eastern Ohio.  Zanesville, Ohio: New Concord Press, 1998.  58.

49.  Robert Ray Meadows.  “History of Virginia’s 4-H Camping Program: A Case Study on Events Leading to the Development of the 4-H Educational Centers.”  PhD dissertation.  Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 21 March 1995.  20.

50.  “Warren O. Bailey.”  Cook and Son–Pallay Funeral Home website, 2016.

51.  Eisenberg.  54.  “When in 1945 he was heading the Youth Department staff of the General Board of Education, Nashville, E.O. Harbin’s health had failed.”

52.  Nolte.  11.  “As the years passed, E.O. became very frail, but came to Rec Lab wheel chair and all, with wife Mabel to care for him.”  Harbin died in 1955.

53.  Mary Lea Bailey.  Email, 25 June 2016.

54.  John Blocher, Jr.  Email, 23 June 2016.  He notes she was president in 1960.

Barry Jolliff.  Email, 30 October 2020.  “There is only one (retired) Committee member with more tenure than me that is still living. [ . . . ]  Her name is Mary Lea Bailey.  She lives in Delaware, Ohio.”

55.  Holcomb.  45.
56.  “BLW Permanent Committee.”  Buckeye Leadership website.