Excerpt from Michael J. Anuta: an Autobiography
Privately published, c2006.
Used by permission of the editor, Janet Anuta Dalquist
In 1945 when I became president of the council I learned that the Oconto company which had formerly operated a large sawmill in Oconto had a very nice camp for sale with considerable forest acreage. It was called Bear Paw Camp. The council staff inspected the site and I took Roland Odgers, president of the First National Bank of Menominee and a member of the Menominee Rotary club to see it. We drove to Mountain, Wisconsin on a wet, muddy, disagreeable April day. We found a beautiful lake with some high shore and a considerable area of woodland around it. It had one disadvantage–the lake had public access on about ten percent of its shore-line but almost all on the opposite shore of the camp. However, we were in such dire need of a campground that we felt that the public access would not hinder our Scouting program. We returned to Menominee and proceeded to make arrangements for its purchase. Thus, Nicolet Area Council acquired a permanent council camp of its own. We immediately set to work to raise the money, and plans were prepared to use the camp that summer. Bear Paw Camp has become one of the fine camps of the Boy Scouts of America in Wisconsin and the nation.
During my year as council president I considered the waterfront facilities available in the city of Menominee. In a two page letter I proposed to Arthur Lindgren, the Scout Executive, that we use this facility for an annual Scout rendevous to compete in swimming, canoeing, log rolling, boat handling, marching, and other Scout skills. The competition would include Scouts from the surrounding Great Lakes states. I suggested the name of “Rendezvous.” Mr. Lindgren took the plan to Chicago and came back with the name of “Bay Jammer.” I participated in the plans and named Mr. John Turner of Menominee, our former camping chairman, as the chairman of the Bay Jammer committee. He served in that capacity for fifteen or twenty years. Donald Payton also chaired the Bay Jammer for many years until his retirement in 1998. I visited the Bay Jammer annually for many years and have a fine collection of Bay Jammer patches. This program has been a great success for over fifty years with units competing from Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana. It is one of the most popular of Scouting competitive events. [Ed. note: The first Bay Jammer was held in 1948. 56 years later, on July 16, 2004, at the age of 103 years and 5 ½ months, Michael Anuta, accompanied by his eldest son, was the first to register for the 2004 Bay Jammer.]
In addition to the Boy Scout troops, I assisted in the formation of a Sea Scout Troop. We were able to obtain the gift of a United States Coast Guard life boat from the Sturgeon Bay Coast Guard Station. One of our local Scouters made a contribution of a magnificent inboard motor for that boat. I served on that unit’s committee for some thirty or more years. We succeeded in getting a gift of a sailing vessel with an auxiliary inboard motor and later a motor cruiser was given to us from James Stang, one of our Scouts. We had wonderful leadership. I cannot remember the earlier ones, but James Vincent, son-in-law of Scoutmaster Marcus Kronauer, was one of the great Scoutmasters. He was a member of the Navy Reserve. We had wonderful Sea Scouting on all of these boats with wonderful skippers.
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