World Fellowship Center
The World Fellowship Center is a 501 nonprofit organization, retreat and intergenerational conference center located in Albany, New Hampshire, United States. It is open between June and September, with most of its scheduled summer program commencing shortly after June solstice and concluding on or shortly after Labor Day weekend. A few workshops and other events take place before or afterwards. Nestled at the southeastern edge of the White Mountain National Forest, directly east of Mount Chocorua off Route 16 in Albany, it currently comprises approximately, including a conference room and dining lodge, nature trails, soccer field, several cabins, campsites and additional lodging facilities, as well as boating and swimming access on a large pond. At capacity it can host approximately 150 guests and features speakers, groups, organizations, activists, artists and entertainers from around the world.
History
The name "World Fellowship" is derived from the World Fellowship of Faiths, which was officially established as an organization in 1929. In 1937, shortly before the outbreak of World War Two, activist, philanthropist, suffragist, and feminist Lola Maverick Lloyd propounded the notion of world government, essentially a forerunner to the United Nations, whereby nation-states would be dissolved and there would be one democratically-elected government of all people. Lloyd saw the League of Nations, created in late 1918 in the aftermath of World War One, as doomed to fail since it was dominated by the very same war-mongering nations that supported the first World War. It was Lloyd's colleague, Charles Frederick Weller, who had been a speechwriter for Theodore Roosevelt, and Weller's wife Eugenia, who first conceived the idea of a summer retreat and conference center devoted to peace and social justice issues and causes some time in the late 1930s. The year 1940 proved to be paramount for the Weller couple - with much of the world engulfed in war, their adult son died. Shortly thereafter, Charles embarked on a 15-day-long meditation and fast on nearby Mount Whiteface, during which he conceived the notion of creating a more permanent place for the World Fellowship of Faiths. Afterwards, Charles and Eugenia selected a plot known as the Draper Estate, located in Albany, which was for sale for $5,000. After making a down payment of $500, the Wellers contacted Lloyd and requested her to pay $2,500; many additional, smaller contributions were amassed in the purchase of the land. Despite the name "World Fellowship of Faiths," which has at times provoked skepticism and dubiety amongst newcomers, World Fellowship has never been officially aligned or affiliated with any religious denomination. The first official year of operation was summer 1941, during which an attendance of 253 people was recorded. The initial theme/mission statement was "In a time of war, prepare for peace." The Wellers assumed the position of directorship for the first twelve summers, from 1941 to 1952. Shortly thereafter, Eugenia died in 1956, and Charles in 1957.In August 1952, Willard Uphaus, a retired Methodist theologian and pacifist, and his wife Ola Uphaus, a social worker, first visited, and became directors in June 1953. Uphaus had previously been fired from Hastings College in Nebraska in 1930 for advocating radical viewpoints, and he remained committed to a pacifist philosophy during World War Two. In September of that year, a series of articles published by Greg Abbott in the Manchester Union Leader maligned Uphaus by branding him as a Communist. The Union Leader had been acquired in 1946 by arch-conservative publisher William Loeb III, and would be used successfully by Loeb to set New Hampshire's political stage for decades to come. Subsequently, in early 1954, with the Red Scare and McCarthyism in full swing, Governor Hugh Gregg, invoking the New Hampshire Subversive Activities Act of 1951, directed Attorney General Louis Wyman to issue a summons for Uphaus mandating that he surrender a list of all attendees and all employees of the World Fellowship Center, out of suspicion that World Fellowship may have had connections to the Communist Party, or was itself a Communist organization. Uphaus steadfastly refused to comply with these demands on the grounds that as a practicing Christian, to do so would be to bear false witness; additionally, it would violate and jeopardize the civil rights and liberties of innocent people. This act of resistance commenced a five-year long legal battle that involved numerous subpoenas and appeals. In an attempt to clarify what the Attorney General's demands were Uphaus visited Wyman at his office in Concord in the spring of 1954 in an unsuccessful attempt to persuade Wyman that any additional list of names would be unreasonable, unnecessary and a breach of professional integrity. In September 1958, the case eventually made its to way the United States Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 in June 1959 in favor of the Attorney General. In December of that year Uphaus was sentenced to a year in jail for contempt of court. The sentence lasted from December 14, 1959, to December 13, 1960. The Uphaus couple remained directors until 1969. Ola died in 1972, and Willard in 1983.
In 1966, Katheryn "Kit" Schmauch and her husband Christoph Schmauch first visited and agreed to take on the role of directorship in 1969, assuming full responsibility in 1970. Kit, a teacher, was from Columbus, Ohio; Christoph was a Lutheran minister from Breslau, East Germany, who had immigrated to the United States in the late 1950s. They had four children when they assumed the position, and have had by far the longest tenure of directorship to date. In the over 30 years that they were involved with World Fellowship, they successfully transformed it from a small-scale and relatively obscure conference center to a moderate-sized and internationally known counter-cultural haven by making numerous expansions, additions, capital and social improvements and liaisons with other politically-inspired networks and organizations throughout both the U.S. and Europe. These included the purchase of and the construction of bunkhouse dormitories and other lodging facilities for seasonal workers, as well as the construction of a year-round Cape house for the directors. They instituted a stipend for employees, purchased laundry facilities, upgraded and expanded the kitchen ; installed commercial-scale refrigerators; drilled an artesian well on site; arranged for weekly trash collection; constructed a wide variety of recreational facilities such as a basketball court, volleyball court, and soccer field; and added numerous rowboats, canoes and an additional raft to the swimming area of the pond. With the acquired acreage, they blazed nature trails for hiking and established weekly guided nature walks. They expanded the program to include a children's fellowship, and for each week of the summer to have a different theme with several guest lecturers invited to speak about various issues pertaining to peace and social justice. In terms of staff networking, the Schmauchs introduced numerous people from Europe to World Fellowship without ever using outside advertising. They remained co-directors through the 2000 season; afterwards, they lived in nearby Conway until the 2010s, subsequently relocating to Columbus.
In May 2000, Andrew Davis and his wife Andrea Walsh, living with their infant daughter at the time in Keene, New Hampshire became directors. During their tenure, they have labored to increase the presence, visibility, and attendance rates of people of color, and transgender/genderqueer/non-binary people as well as upgrade the lodging facilities to comply with fire safety regulations, and improve accessibility to alter-abled people. They have also made the buildings more energy efficient and have worked with nearby farms to have more produce delivered on site. With regards to program changes, they have expanded the season to include weddings in June and September and have created more programs, venues, opportunities and workshops pertaining to the visual arts and body movement. In 2007, they created a recreation coordinator position to arrange daily cycling excursions in the surrounding area in the morning as well as hiking expeditions in the White Mountains in the afternoon.
Governance
The governing body of World Fellowship is a board of trustees, composed of nine to twelve members, each of whom serves a three-year term. The board meets with the co-directors throughout the year to oversee the work of the non-profit organization. The decision-making process is conducted via majority rule.Workstaff
The work crew is hired personally by the directors each year in the spring, usually between March and May. Every employee has a different length of stay, depending on how long they are able to commit, though there are a few year-round positions who work alongside the directors. In the past, workers were paid wages below the state and federal threshold but were compensated by not having to pay for their room and board; currently they are paid higher than federal minimum wage. Most workers are housed in the dorms on-site and work as general staff - alternating daily between housekeeping, dining crew and/or dish pot teams; there are also a few staff hired to do specific tasks. Additionally, there is a set of staff hired to be the established manager of a particular crew, such as lodge manager, dining hall manager and office manager. Finally, there is also one staff co-ordinator who collaborates with the directors in terms of staff oversight. As World Fellowship has a small budget for outside communication and other outreach, almost all staff are acquired through word-of-mouth. As a result, many of the employees have either familial or other close connections to long-time attendees, though there are also some foreign employees who have obtained visas or other temporary work permits.Landscape and buildings
On the World Fellowship main site there is Lloyd Lodge, the primary lodging facility, which has a commercial-sized kitchen, a dining hall, a galley kitchen, eighteen guest rooms and seven full-bathrooms, two half-bathrooms, and an alter-abled accessible showering facility, two screened-in porches and a veranda, a parlor, and a conference room, which has a library and fireplace. In addition to the old conference room, there is a one-room building, constructed in the late 1990s, which currently functions as the primary conference and discussion room. Schmauch house is reached via an engraved brick pathway, completed in the late 2000s from donations from numerous guests, and has a nearby composting toilet and memorial wall. Also on site are a gazebo, picnic tables, a firepit, outdoor grill, basketball and volleyball courts, a chalet, a playground, two dormitories, a Cape house used to house the directors year-round as well as house guests in the summer, a rope swing, a private cabin and chicken coop adjacent to an enclosure that housed Saanens used for cheesemaking from 2008 to 2015. Prominently featured in numerous photographs taken on site is a sizable granite boulder encircled by a flower garden, and a peace pole with a superb view of the eastern face of Mount Chocorua.Located a quarter of a mile southwest along Drake Hill Road is Uphaus Lodge, to which the staff recreational room is attached. Adjacent to that building are several garden beds. Nearly a mile farther southwest, close to the Route 16 southern entrance, there is a cottage, a soccer field, and Weller House. This colonial-style house, purchased in 1958 but built in the early 19th century, is currently the oldest building on site since the demolition of the farmhouse. The primary parking lot is surrounded by several campsites, which provide the most economical lodging options. Just beyond the campsite area, there are the nature trails, which start out as one trail, diverging to the right after approximately a tenth of mile into a self-guided half-mile loop with considerable elevation gain featuring 20 stopping points. The other trail, which leads directly to the swimming and boating area of Whitton Pond, crosses two footbridges and is relatively even terrain. Whitton Pond, which covers approximately and is a maximum of deep, extends over the town border of Madison, has several islands and abuts numerous neighboring properties. At present the pond has very few settlements and is free of motor boats, making it a prime location for swimming, canoeing, kayaking, rowing, fishing, berry-picking and bird-watching. Throughout the summer, numerous other townsfolk and other non-guests make use of the trail on site and the swimming facilities.
For much of World Fellowship's existence there was a large 18th-century farmhouse across from the soccer field and cottage that functioned as lodging quarters with over a dozen rooms, and, in the early days, a dining parlor where breakfast was served prior to the Schmauch era. Immediately adjacent is Whitman Hall, which was previously used as a performance venue and is now used as a storage facility. During the winter of 2007-2008, the farmhouse building incurred numerous damages necessitating a variety of costly electrical and other repairs; subsequently the governing board voted to discontinue it as a lodging facility in 2008. In 2009, the decision was made to have the farmhouse demolished completely in the spring of 2010. As a result, beginning in 2008, off-site cabins located farther northeast on Drake Hill Road were rented, and in the following years, beginning in 2010, a small plot of forested land adjacent the main parking lot was cleared, and two cabins were built between 2016 and 2018. During this time, an additional capital campaign was launched to have a bathhouse and several additional cabins constructed in the vicinity.
Drake Hill Road, upon which all World Fellowship facilities are located, forms an approximately curved tangent to Route 16 and provides access to the site via Route 16 from both the south and the north. The World Fellowship welcoming sign on the southern entrance off Route 16 has been defaced and damaged on several occasions during the time that the World Fellowship Center has existed, reflecting the often strained relationship World Fellowship has had with the nearby communities. During Uphaus's period of directorship, the sign included the words, "All Races Welcome", thereby occasionally attracting people of color who happened to be passing through in an otherwise overwhelmingly white region. In decades subsequent, particularly the 1960s and 1970s, World Fellowship was seen both externally and internally as a safe haven for radicals who expressed socialist, Marxist, and/or other leftist viewpoints - this stood in stark contrast to the rest of Carroll County, which was solidly conservative. In recent years, most tensions have eased and interactions and relations between World Fellowship and the surrounding towns have generally been civil.
Ecology
At an elevation of approximately above sea level, the forest ecosystem on site is typical of the New England/Acadian forests biome with conifers such as the eastern white pine and eastern hemlock interspersed with hardwoods such as American beech, a few species of birch, several species of maple, oak, and ash. Less common hardwoods include quaking aspen as well as pin and choke cherry; less common conifers include balsam fir, black and red spruce, northern white-cedar and red pine. The understory consists of such shrubs and other ground plants include wintergreen/teaberry, hobble-bush and Virginia creeper, at least two varieties of blueberry, as well as several species of aster. Other forest-dwelling plants include Indian pipe and lady slipper. In the wetland areas of the property, water lily, loosestrife and the purple pitcher plant abound.Fauna include several species of rodents - such as rat, eastern gray squirrel and eastern chipmunk. Amphibians such as the toad, spring peeper and bullfrog, and reptiles such as a few species of snake have been observed. Throughout June, July and early August encounters with mosquitoes and deer flies are inevitable. Numerous passerine and songbirds such as the titmouse, purple finch, black-capped chickadee, jays/crows, wren, warbler, dove, woodpecker and thrush have been spotted. Birds of prey encountered include owls, especially the barred owl, and hawks. Throughout the day, but most frequently during the crepuscular and predawn hours, the trill and tremolo of the common loon can be heard on the pond. Far less frequently encountered, but occasionally reported, are sights of black bear, North American porcupine, white-tailed deer, common raccoon, fisher and moose.
Fungi commonly encountered on site include several species of Amanita, Hydnum, milk-caps and a variety of other genera, prominent among which include Cortinarius, Leccinum, Collybia, Hericium, Clavulina, Russula, and Suillus. Some of these species/genera are known to be edible and are included in the fungal foray late in the season.
In August 2019, 400 of World Fellowship's 455 acres were officially put into a conservation easement through the local Upper Saco Valley Land Trust to ensure that they will remain undeveloped indefinitely.