By Staff
BERRIEN SPRINGS – Escanaba, based author Bill Jamerson will present a music and storytelling program about the Civilian Conservation Corps at the Berrien Springs Community Library Community Room, on Tuesday, May 6, at 7 p.m. Admission is free.
The program is co-sponsored by the Berrien Springs Community Library and the History Center at Courthouse Square. The hour-long program includes storytelling, playing original songs he wrote about the CCC with his guitar, and reading excerpts from his novel Big Shoulders.
The CCC celebrates its 75th anniversary this year.
Refreshments will be served following the program.
The Civilian Conservation Corps was a federal works program created by
President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression. During its ten
years, from 1933-1942, over a hundred thousand young men, 17 and older,
enlisted in Michigan. They planted nearly four hundred million trees,
fought forest fires, built state parks and county roads. The camps not
only revitalized Michigan’s natural resources but also turned boys into
men by teaching them discipline and work skills.
Bill's book Big Shoulders is a historical novel that follows a year in the
life of a 17-year-old youth from Hamtramck, who enlisted in the
CCC in 1937. The enrollee joins 200 other young men at Camp Raco, a work
camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula run by reserve army officers. It is a
coming of age story about an angry teenager who faces the rigors of hard
work while learning to cope with and difficult sergeant and fending off
the camp bully.