Courtesy of Sarah Murray
June: Camp Herman
Courtesy of Sarah Murray
Many children who grew up in the Cone mill villages attended Camp Herman for one week in the summer…
“In the summertime everyone went to a week to Camp Herman as a rule. It was named after one of the Cones. It was a real rustic retreat on the north side of town out near Brown summit. Just lots of great memories there, playing in the water, swimming, boating, archery, hiking, and sort of on a Boy Scout motif. At least they made it available for a week for almost all the mill village kids. I think it was like fourteen dollars a week. You paid seven and the Cones paid seven.” –Jerry Riddle, former resident
Courtesy of Arnold Culbreth
“And then in the summer time the Cone’s had Camp Herman with cabins; there was wooden cabins that had cots that connected onto the wall. And the mill would close the last week in July and families would go out to camp…So we would go out there and stay for a week. I think that probably closed when I was in the second grade, which was probably, I guess in the early 50’s. But it was a lot of fun. They girls week and they had boys week and then they had family week…That was a lot of fun. We did a lot of fun things, we really did. The Cones did a lot for the people there.” –Sarah Johnson, former resident
July
White Oak Picnic (Courtesy of Lillie Crum)
Another way to enjoy the summer months was to cool off indoors at the local YMCAs.
Jerry Riddle recalls: “The major communities was White Oak and Proximity and they had the commerce, the company stores, and the local YMCA. And we had really nice YMCAs with a gymnasium, swimming pools. Boys went one afternoon, girls went the next.”
Jim Brewer recounts: Well there was the YMCA that I started at 6 years old and I didn’t stop until I was 20,and I swam couple or three times a week.
August
Sarah Andrews at Carolina Beach (Courtesy of Sarah Murray)
Summer was a fun time for children in the mill villages. In August, Sarah Johnson recalls that “a lot of the families would go to Carolina Beach [the] last week of July when the mill would close and…a lot of people from all the mill villages would be down there together. So that was fun – it really was.” She also remembers playing games like “red light, green light” and hide-and-seek outside during the hot weeks of late summer.
Revolution Softball Team (Courtesy of Carolyn Hinshaw Neese)
Playing and watching sports were also popular August pasttimes. Donald Dyson and Richard Owens remember walking to the stadium to watch the Greensboro Patriots play – according to Richard, he and his friends would “find someway to climb the fence<” and sneak in.
As for mill village games, Richard recalls that “it was no problem at all to get a ballgame up. We had so many children, they were like flies – I mean, every house had a bunch of young’uns in it. All you had to do was walk out the door and start flipping a ball in the air and you had a ballgame!”
Large crowds gathered for games at Cone Ball Park! (Courtesy of Don Morrison)
