French Creek, usually the last week of summer ending with Labor Day, was a high point of the year for me when I was growing up in the Middletown, Pennsylvania OPC. I am sure it was a favorite time for many other OPCers as well.

The very first day of the French Creek Bible Conference in August 1950 was, however, a long, hot one. That morning someone discovered that there were no mattresses for the beds in the cabins. Our pastor, Robert Atwell, the leading organizer of the conference (along with Rev. Lewis Grotenhuis), was not exactly a happy camp director. But, as he often told the story, he saw the outcome as providential. Someone knew of where to buy bed ticks, another knew of a farmer with enough straw, and someone else had a truck. By the late afternoon we campers were filling the ticks with straw and helping to get them to the cabins. The only remaining problem was that straw ticks are only marginally suited for sleeping.

Otherwise, everything was impressive. The spacious wooded setting, with buildings that appear almost unchanged today, proved to be a delight, and the camp was expertly run.

The directors and other pastors who organized the camp had lots of familiarity with Bible conferences. Already in my own experience, I had attended a children’s conference at the Quarryville conference grounds. And for two years after the Quarryville directors left the OPC, we from the Philadelphia Presbytery journeyed to the Seneca Hills conference grounds in Western Pennsylvania.

One feature of these OPC conferences that might have been striking to newcomers was how much teaching there was. Three weighty lectures to sit through and take notes on in the mornings and then to be quizzed about later on. In the evening was a more evangelically oriented service with a Wheaton-style song leader and a solid full-length sermon. Later in the cabins, counselors led nightly Bible-study devotions. But even all that seriousness was just part of days that were high-spirited and immense fun, including lots of humor with camp songs and skits and lots of friendly competition among the four clans, or tribes, or whatever they were called each year. During the early decades the most memorable figure for both humor and competition was the camp cook, Buzz Walmer. Buzz was always ready with a comical remark and could occasionally be persuaded to put on a loud cackle laugh that was rumored to have been the one heard recorded at the Fun House at Hershey Park. Buzz was also a smart, serious Christian, with many down-to-earth theological observations that he could put in homey ways with his Pennsylvania Dutch accent. He also loved softball, for which he was a skilled pitcher and infectiously enthusiastic competitor, helping to make those games a highlight of the days.

Even more important than humor and competition were new friendships among kindred spirits from the variety of churches from the whole mid-Atlantic region. Such friendships, of course, often had romantic potentials, and that could add wonderful drama to a week or in looking forward to who might be around the next year. Some of these camp romances eventually led to marriages. In my own case, it took awhile. I came back after college as a perennial counselor, and eventually I finally struck gold in meeting my future wife, Lucie Commeret.

Whether or not French Creekers found romance, a great many have testified, as I do, to the spiritual benefits of these weeks. The camp featured some great teachers and preachers, and the communal spirit in the activity-filled week in the woods could be spiritually infectious. The closing Sunday night testimony campfire was always a high point. And I can think of many, including some later leaders in the church, whose faith was deeply nourished by the French Creek experience.

The author is professor emeritus of history at the University of Notre Dame. New Horizons, May 2025.