Down on the Farm with the CCC Boys!

Michigan-based author Bill Jamerson will present a music and storytelling program about the Civilian Conservation Corps at the Marion Public Library on Tuesday, April 2 at 6:30 p.m.

Jamerson's presentation includes telling stories, singing original songs and reading excerpts from his novel.  He has performed at dozens of CCC reunions around the country and at CCC-built national and state parks. The presentation is as entertaining as it is important; as honest as it is fun. It's about people both ordinary and extraordinary, with stories of wit, charm and strength. This year is the 80th anniversary of the CCC.

The Civilian Conservation Corps was a federal works program created in 1933 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the heart of The Great Depression. During its nine year run, 49,000 thousand young men served in Iowa camps.  There was an average of 29 camps in operation each year. The enrollees were paid $1 a day plus $25 sent home to their families each month. The money put food on the table for the families back home.

CCC enrollees planted over 30 million trees in Iowa, built hundreds of bridges, erected over 2,000 miles of telephone poles, helped farmers by repairing gullies, terracing hills, providing fertilizing, installing fencing and building outhouses. Jamerson will tell stories about how the CCC interacted with the famers, many of whom were hostile to the Corps when they first opened their camps. In time, the CCC won over the farming communities by helping out in natural disasters and with their many good Samaritan acts.

Jamerson's book, BIG SHOULDERS is a historical novel that follows a year in the life of a seventeen-year-old youth from Detroit who enlisted in the CCC in 1937. He joins two hundred other young men at a work camp in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It is a coming-of-age story of an angry teenager who faces the rigors of hard work, learning to cope with a difficult sergeant and fending off a bully.

A question and answer period and book signing will follow his presentation. Former CCC’ers and their families are encouraged to attend and invited to bring photo albums and CCC memorabilia. For more information please call the library at 377-3412, email mplinfo@cityofmarion.org, or visit Jamerson's website at: billjamerson.com.