It was the summer of 1982, between my sophomore and junior years of high school. Because the schools in my county were then on a 6-3-3 system (junior high 7th through 9th grades), I had only just finished my first year at Henderson County High School, in Kentucky. I’d had a great year in choir and was thrilled when Robert Ellis, the head of all of our high school choirs, took me aside and said, “You’re going to summer music camp with me and some other students.” Okay!
The two-week camp, I think in June, was on the campus of Mount Saint Joseph Academy, a Roman Catholic girl’s school and convent outside of Owensboro. Students would take music theory classes and rehearse choral pieces with the camp-wide choir and also with a select group of older students, both led by Mr. Ellis. Some students would also be in the camp band. Added bonus for me was that two of the HCHS students also going were two of my favorites, Mark Haffner and Randy Wilkerson. We commuted to and from the camp and I laughed to and fro the entire way. I know there were a couple of other students from HCHS but I cannot for the life of me remember who they were (sorry!). But most of the students were from Owensboro.
Here’s how the camp was described in 2014 on the official web site of the Maple Mount convent:
Every summer from 1975 until 2006 Mount Saint Joseph hosted the annual Greater Owensboro Summer Music Camp which gave youngsters two weeks to receive music instruction in a relaxed setting. Maple Mount proved to be a perfect venue for students to swim, take walks, play sports and do crafts between practicing and lessons. Originally sponsored by Brescia College (now University), the camp offered talented musicians ages 11 through 22 vigorous training sessions in their respective instruments and the development of mature practice habits. Typically 75% of the students came from Daviess County, but would include students from other parts of Kentucky and the United States.
Swimming?! Playing sports?!? Missed out on that…
I’m not Roman Catholic. This was my first time on a Roman Catholic school campus of any kind. The Mount Saint Joseph Academy campus was so, so beautiful, all green and covered in trees and feeling like it was out in the middle of nowhere. The chapel in particular was lovely to me. Some of the buildings that made up the campus were first built in the 1870s. The building that was the centerpiece of the academy is one of the oldest buildings in Daviess County. Additions to that academy building were built in 1882, 1904 and 1962. I loved the academy classrooms, even the desks. I love old schools, whether all wooden one-room schools or something vast with bricks and large windows and arched doorways. I like for schools to look like institutions of knowledge, something you should feel honored to enter, something you should respect while there. New schools aren’t built like that. I remember sitting in an old classroom doing my music theory lessons in a workbook, surrounded by just a few other high school students. Because I was taking guitar lessons, I had landed in a level by myself – the other students my age were either in intro to music theory or in the advanced class, but we all sat together in the historic classroom, doing our lessons but not taking it all that seriously – it was summer camp!
At one point during the time there, there was a horrible storm, and then a tornado warning, and it all happened while we were in the large choir rehearsal room. It was absolutely black outside. We were seconds away from having to sit in the floor in THAT position, the one you have to learn when you go to school in the South or the Midwest because of the weather. I kept waiting to hear the train sound, and wondering what I would do when and if I did. When I went home that day after camp, I had to get out of the car half a block from my house and climb over a massive tree blocking the street – I was so happy to see my home was okay.
The day of our final performance at camp felt so elegant. It was one of the first times I had ever gotten dressed up as a teenager. It was the first time I drank champagne punch. Our final musical performances were wonderful, even though I was stung by a bee in the shoulder DURING the performance. I loved looking up and seeing the elderly nuns in the balcony grooving to the little rock band performance.
I did not want that evening to end.
I was in heaven about that camp for weeks afterward.
I never went to that camp again, and that’s such a shame – but my family was just not functional enough to follow up the next year on our own, as well as to arrange transportation for me to go again. The only reason I got to go in the first place was because of that connection with Bob Ellis and that other students could take me. I know that he could be a hard man to love at times – but he was so damn good to me. He changed my life, not just with this camp.
“Music at Maple Mount” started in 1975, and continued for thirty-one years there. It’s now the Institute For Young Musicians and is held elsewhere.
The all-female Mount Saint Joseph Academy opened in 1874. When I returned to HCHS after camp months later, I met a couple of its students at a speech and drama competition held at the community college in Henderson, Kentucky – I liked them immediately. Also, an all-girls school sounded so exotic to me.
The high school existed just for one more year after we were at the camp, until 1983. I heard that there were plenty of students that wanted to attend, but they couldn’t find enough nun teachers. I know that graduating classes were tiny – around 15 or less students. There are more than 800 alumnae of the Mount Saint Joseph Academy.
The main academy building became a retreat center. But it closed in March 2020, when the rest of the Maple Mount campus was shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s never re-opened.
And I just read that the building will be dismantled – it’s structurally unsound. It cannot be repaired.
So sad.
I have no photos from that wonderful summer camp. I wish I did. And I’d love to go to a two-week music camp again on a beautiful campus – even at my age.
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