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 A Brief History of the NOCYC Don and Francis Hill went to camp back in 1947 at Fort Hill as it was beginning. Ted and Mary Waller met them there in 1948 and have been associated with them in camp work ever since. When Mary and Ted moved to Ninth Street in Canton in 1954, they went to camp at Hervida. Then, in association with Jack Hawkins of Massillon, they decided to start a camp in the area. The next year, Bob Manasco had replaced Jack Hawkins at Massillon and they called a meeting of all parties interested in starting a camp. Don and Francis Hill came to that meeting. Great Trail Girl Scout Camp, near Minerva, was rented and NOCYC was on its way. Various places were rented for a number of years and then Don and Francis Hill decided to buy a farm near Lisbon and give forty acres to the camp. After a couple of more frustrating years renting, in a board meeting in January it was decided that this was the year they were going to meet on the forty acres. There wasn’t a thing to serve a camp, but they had to get their advertising out for the coming summer. They had to build a road, get electricity to the property, drill a well, build a dining hall and kitchen, build a sewage disposal plant, and construct ten cabins and the assembly shelter. It was a late, wet spring and the first graded site for the dining hall caved in. Don Hill was the leader of the project and you can hardly imagine how long and hard he worked to get it ready for campers in that August. Volunteer workers did almost all the work. Ted Waller was in charge of construction of the cabins. Don Hill did it all with his usual frugality. It was a great and exhilarating time, the fulfillment of a dream, but for Don, it was the most exhausting time of his life. It is unfortunate that succeeding generations cannot know the dedication and sacrifice that made it possible.
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