More photos uncovered of Geneva Lake in the 1930s

By Dan Plutchak ( Contact )   July 1, 2010 - 12:02 p.m.

Photo at left: The pier at George Williams College summer camp, circa 1930, from the collection of John Meyer.

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John Meyer, who we profiled May 23 in Walworth County Sunday, has uncovered another treasure trove of historic photos from Geneva Lake in the 1930s.

View the slideshow HERE I View the videos HERE.

"I was doing some work on some video and stumbled across a photo album I posted on Google several years ago that contains several dozen of my Lake Geneva photos. This is only a small fraction of what I have. I thought you'd find them interesting," Meyer wrote recently in an e-mail.

In her story in May, reporter Margaret Plevak interviewed Mayer about rare video footage of Geneva Lake that he has posted on YouTube.

Meyer, a Chicago native, spent summers as a child in the 1950s and ’60s at the George Williams College summer camp in Williams Bay.

His father and grandfather both were trustees of the private liberal arts college. Meyer Lodge on campus bears the family name.

“College camp was a major part of our family,” Meyer told Plevak in a phone interview from his home in Carmel, Calif. “Trustee meetings in the summer were always at the college camp, so the family would spend two weeks there every summer.”

In the mid-1990s, Mayer transferred reels of silent family films to video, and asked his dad to watch those old home movies once again.

“Dad was 75 at the time,” Meyer remembered. “Mom was there, too. I hooked up a microphone to add audio to the tape. I told him, ‘Tell me what you see.’”

View a selection of the videos HERE.

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