Page 4 — Thursday, June 17, 2021 — The Hastings Banner
Have you met?
Do you remember?
Summer plans
Banner April 2, 1959
Planning wonderful summer –
Members of the Women’s Board of the
Hastings Country Club met last week at
the home of Mrs. Darrell [Loretta] Aldrich
to plan activities for the new season at
the club. Pictured (seated, from left) are
Mrs. Ray [Anne] Branch, who is in
charge of the food catering service at
the club this year, and Mrs. Kenith
[Katheryn] McIntyre, Mrs. Leon
[Florence] Stander, Mrs. Ray G. [Jean]
Finnie, Mrs. Einar [Gertrude] Frandsen
and Mrs. James W. [Gretchen] Radford,
who is having her coffee cup refilled by
Mrs. Aldrich. In the foreground are Mrs.
Lyle [Eileen] Gillespie and Mrs. Robert
[Minet] Stanley. (Photo by Barth)Gregg Guetschow’s office is bare. There
are no photos of his family. No sign of the
guitar he likes to play. No sign of the pottery
he likes to collect. There’s a desk, two
computers, a table, some cabinets with
papers and an aerial view of Hastings.
As Hastings’ interim city manager,
Guetschow, 67, doesn’t want to get too
comfy in his new office at Hastings City
Hall. He’s not staying for long – maybe just
three months, just until they find a permanent
city manager.
For 40 years, Guetschow (pronounced
“good show”) has served as a city manager,
in both full-time and interim capacities, in
cities across Michigan, from Charlotte to
Hillsdale, to Owosso, to Ionia. The job hasn’t
changed. The size of the cities hasn’t
changed. Even the state hasn’t changed. Ask
him to define his job as city manager, and he
can talk for five straight minutes about the
intricacies of the role.
But growing up in Plainwell, Guetschow
didn’t know he would spend his life as a city
manager. He just had two requirements for
the job he wanted to hold.
“One of them was that it had to involve
serving others –– so a public service career,”
Guetschow said. “And the second was that it
needed to have a lot of variety to it. I didn’t
want to do the same thing day after day.”
Then, during a class on development and
the natural environment his last semester at
Western Michigan University, he had a
“lightbulb” moment.
“I realized that what I wanted to do was to
make cities better places for people to live,”
he added.
Not much has changed since. That is, until
October 2020, when Guetschow decided he
needed a slight change from full-time city
managing. He created his own consulting
firm, Gregg Guidance LLC, and part of the
new job included serving as interim city
manager in different cities. Half a year after
he started the consulting firm, Hastings came
knocking. Former City Manager Jerry
Czarnecki announced he would be stepping
down, and the city needed someone to take
over for a few months.
Guetschow didn’t live in Hastings, but he
knew of the city. He had visited Hastings a
decade ago as part of a mayor exchange
program. He remembers walking down State
Street, going to the library and sampling
beers at Walldorff Brewpub & Bistro.
Over the years, Guetschow continued to
visit the city and try new beers at theWalldorff. Guetschow grew to view Hastings
as a model because of its arts, involvement
from community members and nonprofit
organizations.
“We, in Charlotte, the folks there, always
looked to Hastings as one of the best practice
places you’d look at,” Guetschow said. “You
know, we would oftentimes compare
ourselves and look here and say, ‘Why can’t
we be more like Hastings?’”
When Hastings picked his name out from
a list of former city managers, Guetschow
jumped at the opportunity to serve in the
short term.
“When you’ve been a city manager as
long as I have, and I’ve worked in a number
of different communities, you have the
capability of coming in, quickly sizing of
what’s going on in the community, identify
what needs to be addressed in both the short
term and the long term, and then map out a
plan for how you go about accomplishing
that,” Guetschow said.
As interim city manager, Guetschow isn’t
making big policy changes or shifting the
course of the city plan, but he’s still treating
the job largely the same. He’s offering advice
in planning commission meetings. He’s
having lunch with community members.
He’s preparing written materials for the
incoming city manager. He’s wearing a suit
and one of his 30 ties and bow ties to work
every day. “I take my jacket off and hang it,
but that’s about as casual as you get,” he
said.
Guetschow lives in Charlotte, but, for
three months or so, he’s working here in
Hastings.“I’m not going to do anything that would
interfere with my ability to continue to serve
here until they are ready to, you know, boot
me out the door and have somebody come in
and sit in this chair,” Guetschow said.
For serving the city as interim city
manager, Gregg Guetschow is this week’s
Banner Bright Light.
Favorite movie : “High Noon” – the
original version with Gary Cooper and Grace
Kelly. I’m not typically a fan of westerns, but
“High Noon” is just one of the greatest
movies ever done.
Favorite TV program : I don’t have any
particular series that I watch regularly, other
than “PBS NewsHour,” but my wife and I
are big fans of British police procedurals.
First job: Working as a clerk in a hardware
store.
Best advice ever received : This actually
ties into my first job. I had a box cutter to
slice open the box. I was being pretty
tentative about how I was doing it, I was
pretty feeble in my efforts to get this box
open. And my boss, who ran the store for
many, many years, grabs the box cutter out
of my hand, and in three quick motions,
slices this box open, hands it back to me and
says, “You’ve got to take control of the
situation.” And I have never forgotten that.
I’ve never forgotten that lesson.
Favorite book : “ The Odyssey ” by Homer.
I read that first when I was probably 13 and
have read that now probably in every decade
of my life, in different translations. But every
time I’ve read it, I’ve read it from the
perspective of a 20-year-old and a 30-year-
old and a 50-year-old and a 60-year-old
person. And so you see what’s going on in
that book from different perspectives all the
time.
What motivates me: A challenge. I got to
a point where I needed to challenge myself
intellectually, I’ve been city manager for 20
years, and so that’s when I pursued a
Ph.D. It’s part of why I moved from one
community to another; there was a need for a
new challenge. And it is the primary reason
why I decided to go into semi-retirement and
do something different –– start up my own
business.
Each week, the Banner profiles a person who
makes the community shine. Do you know
someone who should be featured because of
volunteer work, fun-loving personality, for the
stories he or she has to tell or any other reason?
Send information to Newsroom, Hastings Banner,
1351 N. M-43 Highway, Hastings, MI 49058; or
email [email protected].Gregg GuetschowYesterday’s dreams become
today’s reality at Camp Algonquin
Summer can never begin in Barry County
until the campers and counselors arrive for
another season at YMCA Camp Algonquin.
And when they gather Sunday to kick off a
new summer, the moment will be just a little
more special.
Having started with nothing more than a
Quonset hut and three Army-surplus tents in
1946, the magnificent 41-acre complex will
be celebrating its 75th anniversary, com-
plete with a brand-new boathouse, a mag-
nificent lodge and screened-in cabins. Every
year, another 300 youngsters gather for
one- and two-week overnight camps to
swim, hike and play on the camp’s challeng-
ing rope course and launch from a zip-line
tower through the trees.
The Camp Algonquin story will soon be
available in a special 75th anniversary book
being prepared by the camp in cooperation
with J-Ad Graphics. To me, though, the
marvel of the story is how Camp Algonquin
was born from the original Barry County
YMCA and how that organization came
together almost unintentionally over a quiet
social dinner of community leaders in 1914.
The story is worth recounting because, more
than 100 years ago, it set the pattern for how
good things happen in this community.
According to our newspaper files, the
dinner was held at the home of Hastings
City Bank President Chester Messer Jan.
12, 1914, a wintry Tuesday night. It was
Messer’s custom each year to invite the
directors of the area’s four major corpora-
tions along with a few interested citizens
and a special guest speaker. The 1914 guest
list included prestigious local leaders such
as Emil Tyden, Chester’s brother Richard,
Aben E. Johnson, Archie Anderson, Luke
Waters, Louis Health, T.J. Potter, R.C.
Fuller, Kellar Stem, Joseph McKnight, W.R.
Cook and Hastings Banner publisher M.L.
Cook.
Special invitees that year were R.T.
French of Middleville and his guest, the
Rev. H.H. VanAuken of Charlotte, who had
been the pastor of Hastings Presbyterian
Church for several years. Also invited was a
former Middleville businessman, Miner S.
Keeler who had recently moved his brass
factory to Grand Rapids and who was asked
by Messer to arrange the dinner’s guest
speaker. William Gay, proprietor of the
Grand Rapids firm Berkey & Gay, known
for its furniture from coast to coast, accept-
ed a request from Keeler to attend and
speak.
When dinner was over and the group
moved to the parlor, Messer announced that
Gay’s hope had been to talk about the
YMCA organization, a group to which he
continued to dedicate a great deal of his
time at the city, county and state levels.
As the paper recounted, a very plain,
unassuming man then arose to describe the
great benefits the “Y” was providing boys
and young men in Grand Rapids. Gay went
on to tell of the organization’s great work in
shaping the minds and spirits of young men
by “growing a Christian life and character.”
According to the article, Gay clearly had
the interest of his audience. Messer knew
that Keeler also was a big supporter of the Y
program and had recently returned from a
world tour of several countries about which
Messer asked Keeler to share.
Once Gay and Keeler had completed
their presentations, Rev. VanAuken rose to
express the fact that there was an active
YMCA program in Charlotte, and Eaton
County doing great work for young men. He
challenged the group to consider bringing
the program to Barry County. What hap-
pened next is part of the legacy on which
Hastings and Barry County exist today.
“After hearing what Mr. Gay, Mr. Keeler
and Rev. VanAuken said here tonight, I will
not say a word about the Bookcase compa-
ny’s banquet,” Stem began of the subject on
which he was invited to speak. “We have
been hearing about the wonderful work of
the YMCA in other communities. I think we
should start doing something for our young
men and women and begin here and now.
I’m willing to support the cost of the rental
space and a donation of $250 for this year.”
Stem then turned to Tyden, asking whathe thought of the idea. Tyden said he
believed Stem was right, but “we cannot
give the YMCA a fair chance in one year. I
think we should plan for a five-year test.”
“The Spirit of God moved them to do
something they had not planned nor expect-
ed to do,” M.L. Cook wrote in the Banner of
that wintry evening in 1914.
In that same spirit, community leaders
met 29 years later to discuss how to revive
the program, which had been suspended
during World War II, and to lay the ground-
work for Camp Algonquin.
In 1943, the inactive YMCA and the
Hastings Youth Council decided to combine
their two groups under the YMCA banner in
the best interest of serving the youth of the
community. The Hastings Community Fund
agreed to help finance the program and,
again, local leaders stepped up to help
implement another five-year plan to orga-
nize social and recreational activities for
young people in the community. The bril-
liant efforts of that group resulted in the
hiring of Bob King as the new ‘Y’ director.
King, recently discharged from World
War II service in Europe under Gen. George
Patton, had never heard of Hastings and was
living at the time in a cramped Kalamazoo
hotel room with his wife, “Pudge,” their
2-year-old daughter, Sally, and the family’s
Scottie dog. Local leaders recruited King
for a high school teaching and coaching job,
which soon grew into the YMCA position. It
was the entrepreneurial recruiting tactic – so
typical of the vision of this community –
that sealed King’s decision to make his life
in Hastings.
As part of the recruiting package, com-
munity leaders added a six-room apartment
on West Green Street. King jumped at the
opportunity.
From the day he arrived, as a coach/
teacher for one year and then as a YMCA
director for the next 33, King worked hard
to provide others with many programs and
eventually the wonderful camp on Algonquin
Lake. Eight activities were offered in 1946,
expanding to 46 by 1956, 78 by 1970 and
102 in 1972.
Today, the camp is a state-of-the-art facil-
ity due to the generosity of Hastings
Manufacturing Co. Chairman Aben Johnson
who led the original charge to purchase the
land in 1929 that allowed the planning for
Camp Algonquin to begin. In 2000, another
Hastings businessman, Earl McMullin, his
wife, Virginia, their daughter Earlene and
her husband, Larry Baum, spearheaded a
campaign to construct a new main lodge and
cabins along with the updating of many
other camp facilities.
The story is an amazing account of com-
munity cooperation that makes us part of a
worldwide YMCA program that was found-
ed in 1844, and now operates in 119 coun-
tries, reaching more than 58 million people
of all ages. The YMCA is dedicated to
bringing social justice and peace to young
people and their communities, regardless of
religion, race, gender or culture.
Today, the nation’s more than 2,
YMCAs are considered the largest not-for-
profit community service organization in
America. The Y’s core values are caring,
honesty, respect, inclusion and responsibili-
ty – qualities that have stood the test the
time and have become even more important
in today’s restless and uneasy world.
For Barry County and for Camp
Algonquin, it’s a story that has continued
since a simple dinner gathering in 1914 that
set our own community values. That was a
moment to celebrate – and to emulate.Fred Jacobs, CEO,
J-Ad Graphics Inc.Splashdown
These children from Bellevue enjoyed excellent weather in Hastings
Tuesday under the watchful eye of their grandfather, who lives in Hastings.
The Downtown Spray Plaza was a particular favorite. Combine a sunny day,
kids and jets of water spraying up from the ground and the rest is a sort of
joyful poetry. Their grandfather had a great time, too.