“Thank you,” said Cam gratefully. “That would be wonderful.”
Ten minutes later, Cam and L.L. sat discussing the invitation to study rural education. It was not everything they had hoped for, but it was a start. As they talked, Cam thought back over the events that had brought him this far: the business card from the Episcopal rector, the invitation to dinner by the Episcopal dean of Mexico City, the invitation to lunch by Dr. Bevans, Dr. Tannenbaum’s endorsement in the front of his book, and now permission from Rafael Ramírez, director of rural education in Mexico, to go out among the Indian tribes and observe the work of rural schools. They were all links in a chain, and Cam had the faith to believe that somehow the chain would continue and eventually he would be allowed to bring Bible translators into Mexico.
Chapter 12
Camp Wycliffe
For the next six weeks, Cam toured rural Indian schools in the states of Chiapas, Campeche, Tabasco, Veracruz, Morelos, Oaxaca, and Yucatan. He took notes on everything he saw, from the types of textbooks used to the amount of training teachers had received. Overall he was impressed by what he saw. The schools in Mexico still had a long way to go, but the government was making a real effort to improve the lot of Indians in the country. Everywhere Cam went, the letter of introduction from Rafael Ramírez made him an instant honored guest. As he traveled, Cam found himself impressed with some of the results of the Mexican Revolution. In 1922, there had been only 309 public schools in the country; now, eleven years later, there were 7,504 public schools.
Sadly, Cam’s tour of rural schools was cut short when he received a telegram from Chicago informing him that Elvira was seriously ill and not expected to live more than a few days. Cam wanted to get to his wife’s side as fast as he could, but he didn’t have the money for a plane ticket, so he climbed aboard a train headed for the U.S. border. The train was slow, and as Cam sat surrounded by Mexican people in the second-class carriage, he prayed that Elvira would hold on until he got to her.
Once in the United States, Cam caught another train to Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, where his brother Paul was now director at the John Brown Academy. Paul loaned Cam a car, and as quickly as he could, Cam drove to Chicago. He found Elvira alive but very weak. She could barely lift her head off the pillow. When she saw Cam, she begged him to take her to the mountains. Cam arranged blankets and pillows in the back seat of the car and gently helped his wife into the car. He then drove to the Ozark Mountains to stay with Dr. Bast and his wife, who were good friends of Paul Townsend’s.
Under Dr. Bast’s constant care, Elvira began to make a slow recovery. As she recovered, Cam made the most of the opportunity to rest, taking long, leisurely strolls through the woods. It was spring in the Ozarks, the wild apple trees were in blossom, and the air was alive with the cries of mockingbirds as they busily built their nests.
Cam’s body might have rested, but his mind did not. It was as active as ever. Cam thought about all he had seen in Mexico, and he wrote some articles on the state of rural education there. The articles were published in the Dallas News newspaper and School and Society magazine. Much to his surprise, Cam received a letter from Rafael Ramírez congratulating him on his understanding of rural education in Mexico. Somehow Cam’s articles had found their way to Rafael’s office.
Cam also started thinking again about the training school in linguistics. As he walked through the woods, he became convinced it was time to begin such a school. Then the thought struck him: Why not hold the school right there in the Ozark Mountains? For the next month, Cam thought about little else than the form a linguistics school should take. He wrote many letters to Christians who had shown an interest in linguistics, from college professors to elderly women in his home church who had promised to pray for him daily.
Then one Monday morning early in April 1934, Cam sat down at his typewriter and rolled several sheets of blank paper separated by layers of carbon paper into the machine. He was ready to type up the prospectus for his linguistics school. It read:
SUMMER TRAINING CAMP
FOR PROSPECTIVE BIBLE TRANSLATORS
June 7–Sept. 7, 1934
Happy Valley Farm,
Sulphur Springs, Arkansas
TEACHERS AND SUBJECTS
TO BE COVERED AS TIME PERMITS:
L. L. Legters:
Indian Distribution and Tribal History
Indian Customs and Psychology
Indian Evangelization and Spiritual Development
How to Get Guidance
How to Work with Others
J. M. Chicol:
Spanish
Indian Orthography and Pronunciation
Indian Superstitions, Vices and Religions
W. C. Townsend:
Economic and Cultural Status of the Indians
Governmental Programs Regarding Indians
Indian Translation—Field Problems
Indian Philology
Why and How of Reading Campaigns
Paul Townsend:
Indian Workers’ Practical Living Problems
Some notions will also be given regarding the geography and history of Latin America and it is hoped that we can secure Frank C. Pinkerton, M.D., for courses on Keeping Well in the Tropics, First Aid, and Indian Archaeology, and Dr. E. L. McCreery for a short course on Phonetics. Where the word Indian is used it refers to the Indians of Latin America.
Cam typed up something else, too—a letter to Will Nyman, head of the missionary committee at the Church of the Open Door in Los Angeles. It was not an easy letter for Cam to write. The church had supported him financially for seventeen years. In the letter, Cam asked them to find another missionary to give their money to, though he still asked for the church’s prayer support. He had thought about this decision long and hard and finally decided it would be best for him to enter a country as a linguist, someone who wanted to translate native languages. If he was asked where his money came from, he wanted to be able to say that concerned friends and family members helped out with gifts rather than that he was on the “payroll” of a church, no matter how lean that payroll might be!
Over the next month, Cam made several visits to Christian colleges in the area looking for students who wanted to be part of his first summer linguistics program. He handed out copies of the prospectus after class, often staying late into the evening to answer people’s questions. And there were plenty of questions, since no one had ever run a program quite like this before. Most prospective students wanted to know where they would be living if they came and what they would be doing. Cam pulled no punches. He told them one of the objectives of the camp was to weed out anyone who could not stand up to the harsh living conditions they would encounter in some of the remote and primitive areas where the Bible needed to be translated.
On Thursday, June 7, 1934, Cam Townsend surveyed the scene before him. Sitting on nail kegs in the front yard of a sparsely furnished farmhouse were seven people. The teachers outnumbered the students two to one! Richmond McKinney from Dallas Theological Seminary and Ed Sywulka from Columbia Bible College in South Carolina were the only two students who had responded to the prospectus and enrolled in the school. Joe Chicol, Paul Townsend, Leonard Legters, and, of course, Cam were there as teachers. Elvira, whose health had improved some, was there to support the group in any way she could.
Cam was excited. He didn’t care how few people showed up. The point was that Camp Wycliffe had begun. And the camp turned out to be every bit as tough as Cam had promised it would be. There were no beds, only the wooden floor to sleep on, softened with cut grass, if the students decided to cut it. There was no indoor plumbing. Water had to be pumped from a well, and everyone took turns preparing meals from the produce grown on the farm. There was not much money to buy anything else. Occasionally someone in Cam’s family would send Cam a few dollars, which he shared with the group. Or sometimes one of the staff would be invited to speak at a nearby church, for which he received a small offering. This money, too, was shared with the group. No one seemed to mind that money was in short supply or that food choices were fairly limited. There was so much to learn in such a short time that no one had time to worry about his stomach.
Near the end of the three-month school, Cam received a letter informing him that Dr. McCreery, a former missionary to Africa and teacher at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (Biola), would not be able to make it to the camp after all. Dr. McCreery had commitments in California that he could not break. At first Cam was disappointed because both Richmond McKinney and Ed Sywulka needed more training in phonetics. Then he struck on an idea. If Dr. McCreery couldn’t come to them, why not send the young men to Dr. McCreery? Cam quickly wrote to his old friend Will Nyman, who lived in Glendale, California, and asked if he would be willing to host the two students while they studied with Dr. McCreery in Los Angeles.
Will wrote right back. The young men were welcome to stay with his family for as long as they needed. On their trip to Los Angeles, Cam arranged for Richmond and Ed to stay with various missionaries living on Indian reservations. He wanted them to be aware that there were many native groups inside the boundaries of the United States who spoke little or no English and were in need of a written language of their own.
The plan worked without a hitch, and in September 1934, the two students graduated and Camp Wycliffe was declared a success.
Once the school was over, Cam and Elvira set off for Mexico. Getting across the border wasn’t any trouble this time. The trouble started inside Mexico. The couple drove down the Pan American highway as far as Monterrey. From there they planned to head south to Mexico City but were hampered from doing so by huge landslides that blocked the road. Since there was no way around the landslides, Cam and Elvira waited in Monterrey for eight weeks while the road was repaired. The strain of it all aggravated Elvira’s condition, and once again a doctor told Cam his wife was about to die. He advised Cam to begin making plans for Elvira’s funeral, since many permits would be needed to hold a religious service in the city.
In the end, Cam decided it would be best to take Elvira home to the people who knew and loved her. He gassed up the car and headed north to Dallas. Back home, many people helped take care of Elvira, and Cam found himself with some time to think about the future. His heart was still set on helping Indians. As he thought about the way to help them, he came upon an interesting idea. Why not write a novel that would show the hardships of life for the Indians of Central America? Perhaps people who would not come to a church to hear Cam speak about the needs of Indians in Central America would be interested enough to read a novel about the Indians’ hardships. Cam pulled out his typewriter and began immediately.
Four months later, Tolo, the Volcano’s Son was finished. Cam called it fiction, but the book was really based on many of the people he had lived and worked with in San Antonio. He showed the manuscript to the editor of a magazine called Revelation, (today called Eternity), and the editor agreed to publish the story in the magazine as a serial, one chapter a month.
By now it was winter, and Cam began promoting the second linguistics school, to be held in the summer of 1935. He typed another prospectus and wrote hundreds of letters contacting anyone he thought might be remotely interested in attending. His persistence paid off. There had been two students in 1934, but five students signed up for the 1935 school. This time, the number of students would equal the number of teachers.
Chapter 13
South to Mexico
Once again, Cam welcomed each student to Camp Wycliffe. The first two to arrive were Brainerd Legters and Max Lathrop. Brainerd was L.L.’s son. He had just finished seminary in Philadelphia and had convinced fellow student Maxwell Lathrop to attend the camp with him. The two planned to go on to Mexico after the school if they could get visas.
