Whitfield Jenks Bell, Jr., (3 December, 1914-2 January, 2009) was born in Newburgh, New York, and grew up in suburban Philadelphia.1 After graduating from Lower Merion High School, he enrolled in Dickinson College, graduating in the class of 1935.
For many of us who love exploring Camp Michaux, it is a marriage of insatiable curiosity with a rich and deserving history. to those who seek with tenacity and have a bit of luck on their side, Camp Michaux slowly reveals its secrets. Each time I return, I’m filled with child-like anticipation and hope.
Interview of Robert W. Black for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library an initiative of the Cumberland County Historical Society. Black discusses growing up on a farm in Gardners, Pennsylvania during the Great Depression.
John H. Light, An Infantryman Remembers World Wtzr II. Shippensburg PA: Beidel Printing House, Inc., 1997. vii, 157 pp. Paperback, $10.95.
Brian Lockman, World War II in Their Own Words. Stackpole Books, 2005. Photographs, timeline, maps, bibliography, index, 251 pages, paperback $19.95.
Ken Cohick and Gary Fisher discuss their experiences as campers and councilers at Camp Michaux for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library a project of the Cumberland County Historical Society.
H. Robert Davis, Jr. was born on August 11, 1920, in Harrisburg to Harry Robert Davis Sr and Amy Hoak Davis. Davis graduated from John Harris High School in 1938 and attended Harrisburg Academy.
It was Pearl Harbor Day plus four. In that four years Dickinson College had lost most of its students to war service. It had lost one president, and its current one had been ailing since a March heart attack. It had lost much faculty and engaged the rest along with its facilities and energy in a training program for the air corps.
Interview with J. L. Durnin for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library. Durnin discusses growing up during the Great Depression in Carlisle, his World War II military experience, and later years working at AMP Inc.
I have never forgotten my first solitary walk through Camp Michaux. The sun was setting and visitors had gone. I explored in silence, hearing only a gentle breeze create an eerie creaking in the trees that made me strain my ear as if listening for voices of the past.