Author’s Note: This is the second installment in a series of occasional posts exploring the history of my 2x great grandfather, Rudolph Johnson, a notable figure in early 20th-century American nudism. Today marks what would have been his 140th birthday—or possibly his 138th; the records are somewhat ambiguous. These posts aim to weave together Rudolph’s legacy with my own journey into naturism, a path that has unfolded from my extensive research into his life and my efforts to preserve his story.
It’s my hope that these narratives might one day culminate in a book. For now, they remain a series of personal and true short stories available exclusively to our paid subscribers. Enjoy.
Prologue
Rudolph Johnson faced a defeat in the presidential elections held at the Sunbathers’ Convention in Denver, the summer of 1949. It was an upset for members and delegates who were rooting for an outsider, voting for change.
Living as he did on the other side of the country from the New Jersey-based American Sunbathing Association (ASA) and most of its founders and leaders, Rudolph Johnson was an outsider in more ways than one. It was a status he embraced in politics as in life. In fact, as a tattooed proprietor of a rural nudist camp in the deep woods of western Washington, it was an image he rather cultivated.
It was likely due to his outsider reputation that Rudolph was well-liked among nudists and had strong support for the presidency. His home nudist club, the Cobblestone Suntanners, and his regional organization, the Northwest ASA—which he co-founded in Washington three and two years prior, respectively—were both growing in influence in the national movement. Rudy’s good-natured affability and soft sense of humor must have been viewed as a nice change from the big egos that the political position tended to attract.
It was a particular moment in the ASA’s history in which a substantial faction of the organization’s members were demanding reforms. Many of the men had recently returned from fighting a great world war overseas that saw them championing democracy over the evils of autocracy and authoritarianism, and they wanted their national nudist organization to reflect those values. Currently, it wasn’t.
Over the last three years, nudists around the country began establishing their own regional offshoots of the ASA as a path toward better representation in the national movement and as a way to wrest some control from the national organization. Many members took issue with the organization’s central leadership. The corporation’s charismatic Executive Secretary and founder, Ilsley “Uncle Danny” Boone, managed the day-to-day and chaired the board and also ran the magazine Sunshine & Health. Boone kept tight control over the organization’s member rolls and finances. The reformists wanted to see Uncle Danny ousted, and one potential step toward this end, in their view, was the election of an outsider president.
But after the votes were cast at the annual convention held at the Mountain Air and Sunshine Club near Denver that summer, it became evident that Boone outmaneuvered Rudolph and his supporters through the strategic use of membership proxy votes, a move he’d pulled before. Boone and his daughter, Margaret Pulis, herself a former ASA President, had exercised their control over these proxies to secure the victory for their preferred incumbent candidate, Edith Church, the club leader from Ohio.
Nudist writer Earl Wright wrote of the vote in his newsletter The Black Horse:
Since 1938, and undoubtedly before that, there has been a very strong objection to the use of proxies for the ASA control of every situation. The Denver convention gave an outstanding example of this in the vote for the president, with and without the use of proxies as follows:
With Proxies
Edith Church - 337
Rudolph Johnson - 127Without Proxies
Edith Church - 40
Rudolph Johnson - 50Uncle Danny and Margaret Pulis carried 227 proxies of persons who were absolutely ignorant of what they were to be used for.1
A motion was made by one member to declare the presidential election invalid, but it was tabled upon a motion by Uncle Danny and Edith Church’s election as president was upheld.
Thus, Rudolph lost the presidency despite being the more popular candidate. However, two concessions were tendered. Rudolph became a member of the ASA’s board of directors, and his home club, the Cobblestone Suntanners of Yelm, Washington, was chosen by convention delegates as the site for the next national gathering, to take place in one year, August 9th-13th, 1950.
Cobblestone’s conundrum
In only a few seasons, Rudolph Johnson had personally built up the rustic Cobblestone Suntanners club from wooded acreage into a rather impressive getaway camp using little more than his own two hands.
He converted an old barn into a surprisingly comfortable clubhouse, complete with an iron stove and a protective tin roof. He erected a water tower with lumber he procured from all around his 130 acres. He leveled sites for airstreams and dry camping around the property, employing an old John Deere to accomplish a large portion of the work. He manicured the grounds and cleared pathways. He even established a grassy patch for a volleyball net. By and large, Rudy did the work himself, but the members who gathered there would pitch in when they could.
On weekends and holidays during the summer months, visiting members numbered in the tens and dozens. Those who played instruments were enlisted to fiddle around together and provide in-house entertainment while Mary, Rudolph’s beloved wife of more than forty years, provided meals and acted as innkeeper. It was a community. It was quaint.
But hosting a small group of weekend campers was nothing like supporting over a hundred conventioneers and club delegates traveling from all over the country for several nights. Rudolph and Mary had legitimate concerns about their ability to endure such an event. What would people do? What activities could be planned?
So, at age sixty-five, Rudolph set out to construct a swimming pool, as the clock ticked toward the next national convention.
Best laid plans
Rudolph was already regarded by the East-coast editors of the national nudist magazine as something of a tall-tale figure. Barrel-chested and tattooed, a former naval officer and career logger, he was described as the “great Dane” who lived off the land and built his house and all his furniture by hand.
Sunshine & Health delighted in this image when it profiled him for a pictorial article that hailed him as the “undisputed hard-work champion of the nudism movement.”
Much of that image was true and some was embellished, but it reflected a core truth: it was not in Rudolph Johnson’s nature to “go small.” This was best evidenced by the twenty-bedroom, three-story cobblestone mansion he built for his family of seven in the late 1920s.
But Rudolph had been a younger man when he built the house, forty at most. That was before his kids were raised, before the rheumatoid, before the war. Did he still have what it took to accomplish another monumental construction project at his current age, let alone on such a rigorous timeline?
In keeping with the motif of his club, Rudolph planned to line the pool with the same distinctive cobblestones that he’d used to construct the big house. He designed a rectangular cavity of massive proportions—one hundred feet long by thirty feet wide, grading from three feet at the shallow end to nine feet at the deep end with four rounded corners—complete with a substantially lifted diving board mounted to a cobblestone column. Lining the walls, he envisioned a mosaic of stones ranging in size, cemented together into a monolithic quartzite monument to the nearby river from which the materials, and soon its water, would be drawn.
As a symbol of his resolve to finish the project, Rudy vowed not to shave his face or cut his hair until it was completed.
Digging a hole
Rudolph excavated most of the hole in about three months, using his John Deere to haul the bulk of the earth to a convenient corner of his property.
He collected stones from the Deschutes, thousands ranging from six inches to two feet in diameter. He loaded them on a trailer and hauled them up the hill behind the Deere.
He tediously scrubbed each stone with water and a wire brush to ensure it would properly stick to the mortar, which he constantly had to mix in small batches. The cement had to be applied to every gap and cranny for the pool to retain water.
When the weather was nice, he worked wearing only his boots and socks.
In a club report for Sunshine & Health in which he humorously refers to himself in the third person, Rudolph wrote:
Rudolph has resolved not to shave or get his hair cut ‘till he has the walls of the pool finished. He hasn't shaved or cut his hair for nearly three months now. His wife now keeps an axe handy when he is about, for she is not quite certain whether he is a bear, or sumpin’ the cat dragged out of Borneo.2
Stone by stone, batch by batch, Rudolph tediously selected and matched shapes and sizes like puzzle pieces as he worked his way around the pool. In the end, he would have to cover the more than 3,000 square feet of wall surrounding the earthen orifice. Before he knew it, Winter had arrived.
In more ways than one, Rudy found himself in the deep end.
Winter in the woods
According to historical weather charts for the Seattle-Tacoma region, the winter of 1949 was notably harsh. The season was marked by prolonged periods of cold temperatures and significant snowfall.
Undeterred by the cold, Rudolph bundled up in layers and lit fires to work by and to help the mortar set. He wrote about his challenges in another Sunshine & Health club report, again in the third person:
Rudolph’s whiskers, which he won’t shave until the pool is finished, have nearly eight weeks extra length of growth because of the severe winter weather and continued flood conditions. There was nearly 36 inches of snow at one time here at Cobblestone Lodge, which was a record for this particular part of the state of Washington. The old sheep-shed near the clubhouse gave up and laid down for good under the weight of the snow. […]
Rudy planned to go right ahead with work on the pool immediately after the New Year, counting on a possible delay of a couple of weeks or so during the winter, but, the weatherman had to put his oar into the deal. Result, instead of having most of the walls of the pool finished by the middle of March or the first part of April, it will probably be some time in late May.3
Boone or bust
Back on the East Coast, Uncle Danny was beset by a growing number of members and leaders in the nudist movement calling for his resignation, a chorus that had only grown louder after his autocratic use of the organization’s proxy votes to overrule the voting majority last Summer. It was felt that one of the ways Boone had retained control over the organization for so long was that he also controlled Sunshine & Health, which was the defacto nudist magazine in the United States. Earl Wright expressed some of this frustration in his mimeographed newsletter The Black Horse, one of the first periodicals to challenge Sunshine & Health’s narrative dominance:
One of the most important factors in the organizational setup of the A.S.A. is its perpetual control by those on the inside, and the absolute futility of anybody thinking that any changes can be made that are not agreeable to Mr. Boone. […]
It would seem that there has always been strong objection to the dictatorial control of the A.S.A. by Mr. Boone which, from time to time, has broken through the surface in open rebellion, but with all nudist publicity in the hands of Mr. Boone, it never amounted to anything more than just that.4
Boone realized what he had to do. He was not ready to give up his control over the board, but he knew a concession had to be made.
Uncle Danny was not so stupid that he couldn’t read the signs. Much to the amazement of the dissident faction, he suddenly announced his resignation as the Executive Director in the spring of 1950. Ready to bring things to a head again that summer, the opposition was dumbfounded, caught completely off-guard. Could it be that all they had worked for was now being delivered straight into their hands without a fight? True, Boone was seventy-one—he had been fifty two when he joined the movement back in 1931. Perhaps the old warrior was just tired. There was even talk of erecting a bust of him at the entrance to Sunshine Park. The rebels watched agog as he introduced his handpicked successor, a member of Chicago’s Lake O’ the Woods Club, one Norval E. Packwood.5
Members were not sure at first what to make of this change. According to Sunshine & Health editor Donald Johnson in his 1959 book The Nudists, “Mr. Packwood was regarded with certain suspicion at first, since he was so clearly a Boone appointee. The suspicion turned to wonder and soon delight when it became clear that his thinking was independent and definitely in favor of many of the reforms which had been demanded for some time.”6
Anticipation
In the late Spring, Rudolph stopped work long enough to travel to New York City for an ASA board meeting. While there, Rudy briefly met with the newly installed Mr. Packwood. It was their first time meeting, but in due course they would collaborate more closely. There’s more to say about that in a future chapter.
Rudolph didn’t stay in New York long. The convention approached at a gallop while the work on the pool continued at a trot. Some costs incurred for equipment and other materials that Rudolph couldn’t fairly cover out of pocket. To pay for these expenses, he sought loans from other clubs within the ASA, securing help from his neighbor to the south, Fraternity Snoqualmie, and the Mountain Air and Sunshine Club in Colorado.
The club was dormant in the wintertime. Cobblestone members must have wondered whether Rudolph would have time to finish his great task with all the weather setbacks. The visitors who first returned to visit the club as the weather warmed were first astounded by the development of Rudy’s beard, and soon after dazzled by the revelation of his amazing work. A few of the men were obliged to pitch in with the remaining load, but little was left to do.
Rudolph’s work soon became a talking point among nudists looking forward to the summer convention. Donald Johnson teased in Sunshine & Health:
Some time ago the construction of a new swimming pool was begun. The pool was planned to be 60 by 100 feet [sic], and that is the size which is now nearing completion. As Rudolph started in on his labors of construction he decided to forego shaving or haircuts until such time as the project lay completed before him. So he set to work Our latest information is that the pool is almost finished and will definitely be ready for the delegates and guests who will assemble at Cobblestone on August 9.
While Rudolph Johnson has been building his pool, stone by stone, his virile whiskers have done some impressive construction work of their own.
With the weather warming and the basic construction of the pool complete, Rudolph decided to finally get a haircut and shave his grizzly pelage. But true to form, he had to commemorate the moment with a surprising piece of art.
A photograph from that time shows Rudolph, beard long and hair uncut, holding a trowel and shaking hands with his pre-construction, clean-shaven self. A third, recently shorn post-construction Rudolph looks on and points cheekily from a distance. Rudolph constructed this nearly seamless photographic composite himself, many decades before the advent of Adobe Photoshop. Needless to say, like the pool, this would have taken some planning and no small amount of craft.
Final touches
When the plumbing and foundation were ready, one of the last steps was to lay the pool’s cement bottom floor. A crew with a truck was hired to do the job, which was done in about a day.
With the pool now mostly out of the way, there were other preparations to be made for conventioneers. In an issue of Sunshine & Health leading up to the convention date, Rudolph wrote a charming club update:
The Flag Raising at Cobblestone Suntanners
Yelm, Washington
SUNDAY, June 11th—A day made specially by the “weatherman” for the occasion, our flagpole, perfectly straight and 47¼ feet tall, was raised into place at about 11:30 AM, in preparation for the Flag Raising ceremony, which was held at 12:15 PM. And to repeat, “A most beautiful day for a beautiful occasion.” The “STAR SPANGLED BANNER” was sung by those assembled, while the flag was hauled to the top of the flagpole by the donor of the flag, Retta, of Cobblestone Suntanners. […]With the floor of the big, new pool finished, and water running over it to properly “cure” it, there was about 18 inches of water in the deep end of the pool. The “small fry,” having permission to play in it, took full advantage of the occasion and had the time of their young lives while it lasted. One can only imagine what it will mean in real wholehearted enjoyment for the youngsters as well as the older folks when the pool is full of water. […]
Preparations are still being continued to make attendance at the 1950 ASA convention an event to be pleasantly remembered for some time.
RUDOLPH, President, Cobblestone Suntannters.
Among the other preparations for the convention, he also constructed a rustic snack bar, erected a large flagpole, hand-built several benches and chairs for attendees to sit on, and established other decorative features and amenities to welcome the conventioneers. The members pitched in, too.
A gas-powered generator powered a pump that ran water directly from the river more than 400 feet up the hill and into the pool. When the eagerly anticipated time finally arrived, Rudy was sure to capture the moment on celluloid, including Mary in the image.
Acknowledging Rudolph’s value to their club’s good standing in the nudist community, the members informally decided that the pool deserved a name befitting of its benefactor. They began calling it “Lake Rudolph.”
Man Rudolph accepted the honor demurely.
Convention proceedings
Sunshine & Health covered the events of the 19th annual American Sunbathing Association convention at Cobblestone Suntanners Club rather thoroughly in the November issue.7
Norval Packwood, in one of the first official engagements of his new position, attended from New Jersey. Uncle Danny did not make the trip. In his written overview of the events, Packwood detailed his anticipation, beginning with his flight from New York and the extended commute to the rural camp. He elaborated on his first impressions of Cobblestone:
Just as we had completed the registering, who should come to greet us but the genial host himself—the one and only Rudolph Johnson. Although Rudolph had attended an ASA board meeting in New York, which we also attended, this was the first time either of us had ever really met Rudolph. In New York, he was hiding behind so much brush that we had to come back to Sunshine Park and dig out a picture of him to see what he really looked like.
We were assigned to our rooms in the beautiful cobblestone home,8 which Rudy built with his own two hands, and after a little rest, took a walk up to the campgrounds. There we saw something, without seeing it—you could not possibly believe the beauty and the size of it—and that is the famous swimming pool. We have seen a lot of swimming pools and pictures of swimming pools in our time, pools which ran into the thousands of dollars to build, but never had we seen anything to compare with the pool at Cobblestone Suntanners. Pictures just can't do it justice. The next five days saw it well populated with swimmers, young and old, and it was easily the most popular of all spots on the grounds.
The pool was the talk of the convention, but visitors marveled at all of the immense work Rudolph had clearly put in for their benefit.
Photos of the event portray the King and Queen of the ASA, winners of the royalty pageant, seated regally with crowns and a bouquet of fern leaves on a spartan wood bench made from tree branches. A volleyball competition was also held and won for the third year in a row by defending champions from Oakdale Ranch in Southern California.
Events like a diving competition and swimming contest were well documented. Official meetings took place on the adjacent lawn.
Rose Holroyd, the longtime secretary from the head office, kept the official minutes of the four daily sessions of the Annual Meeting.
After a year of juggling convention prep and pool construction, Rudolph Johnson took action in the second session. He proposed extending the camp selection timeline for ASA conventions from one to two years. Unsurprisingly, his motion passed unanimously.
Per the custom, it was on the fourth and final day that the presidential nominations took place. Thankfully, Ms. Holroyd took excellent notes.
Election proceedings
First, the nominating committee named their nominations for all of the elected offices. They named Edith Church, the incumbent, the official nominee for president. Soon after, when nominations were opened to the floor, Rudolph Johnson was named. Also nominated was Alois Knapp, a pioneering nudist camp leader from Chicago who was absent from the convention after the sudden death of his wife.
Earl Wright took the floor and raised a question regarding the nomination of Edith Church, stating that according to the Constitution and By-laws of the ASA, she was not a legal nominee.9 In response, Edith Church called on Norval Packwood, the Executive Director, to address Mr. Wright's challenge. Mr. Packwood then read to the assembly the relevant section of the Constitution (Sec. II, First Paragraph) that covers the nomination and election of a President of The American Sunbathing Association, Inc.
Following this, Mr. Packwood made Motion #4: that the assembly approve all the actions of the Association during the past year. This motion was seconded by Jim Sutherlin.10
After the nominations were complete, it came the time for the voting. When the results were in and announcements ready to be made, the presidential election followed the lower offices.
Report of Presidential Election by Election Judges:
Edith Church: 157 votes
Rudolph Johnson: 218 votes
Alois Knapp: 3 votes
Edith Church asked for a unanimous vote from the floor for Rudolph Johnson as President of the American Sunbathing Association, at which time she handed the President's gavel over to Rudolph. Lionel seconded. Unanimously carried.
Rudolph Johnson asked for a vote of confidence for Edith Church for her splendid work during the past year. Logan seconded. Unanimously carried.11
With the grace of a peaceful and good-natured transition of power from his predecessor, Ms. Church, Rudolph became the President of the national association of nudists. Incidentally, the first order of business after his election would require Rudy’s recusal:
At this point of the meeting, Edith Church requested Rudolph Johnson to leave the business session for a brief period. Rudolph agreed and left the session. Edith Church then called [ASA-West President] Logan Bachar to the floor. Logan spoke of the small attendance at the meeting, which he felt was possibly due to the unsettled conditions of the nation at large. He went on to say that Rudolph had done a tremendous amount of work in preparation for the convention. The beautiful pool of cobblestones, 100 ft. long and 30 ft. wide, 8½ ft. deep at one end, was an outstanding example of the work done.12
Bachar then moved that the convention raise a voluntary fund to pay off the loans solicited by Rudolph Johnson to construct the swimming pool and other facilities for the accommodation of the 1950 A.S.A. convention. The motion was seconded and unanimously carried.
Rudolph had demonstrated an unrelenting work ethic and good-natured leadership, earning a substantial margin of votes from the members to place him into the presidency. In recognition of his work, the debt incurred by Rudolph to build the pool was forgiven.
Rudolph’s election and the congenial events surrounding it were a high point of the meeting, but it bears mentioning that not all of the proceedings were conducted with such joviality. There were still deep disagreements about the direction of the ASA and whether or not Boone and his loyalists were truly open to a more democratic process within the organization. There was much discord among membership, now looking to Rudolph to provide hope for a way forward.
President’s message
The convention issue of Sunshine & Health also carried Rudolph Johnson’s first “President’s Message.” Rudolph used the opportunity to address the disunity within the ASA and offer a message of cooperative spirit.
While the attendance at the recent annual American Sunbathing Association convention held at Cobblestone Suntanners camp was not as great as was reasonably expected, I believe it was one of the most successful of any held in recent years. There were many problems and many differences of opinion, but solutions to the various problems were arrived at in a very satisfactory manner. All the members of Cobblestone, as hosts to the 1950 annual ASA convention, are deeply gratified.
Differences of opinion are perfectly legitimate and are to be expected at all times, in any profession and walk of life. However, the settling of these differences need not be accomplished by trying to shout down the opposition. If everyone concerned can have the opportunity to state his views on the question at hand without disrespectful interruptions, there is no reason why we cannot all become united in a solid organization for the good of all who believe in our way of living. When loud angry shouting at one another, and disrespectful remarks are resorted to, nothing but ill feeling can possibly result. [...]
Arriving at solutions to difficult problems in a gentlemanly and peaceful manner can do nothing else but promote harmony and respect even among those having violently different opinions. If opponents in debate can respect each other after a term of debate, friendship will have been cemented into a more binding bond for all concerned. [...]
We have many determined opponents to our way of living, [...] but if we can unite, and then discuss the matter in a wholly friendly manner, we are bound to make headway that should create harmony and satisfaction among us all. [...]
A friendly tolerance will beget more of the same. Let us strive for such!
Yours-for-better-natural-living,
RUDOLPH JOHNSON, President, American Sunbathing Assn. Inc.
Stalwart man
Clearly, there was some hope that Rudolph would bring peace to the ASA. Page two of the convention issue of Sunshine & Health featured a full-page image of Rudolph. Beneath the photo, the caption reads:
We proudly present the stalwart man who began with only courage, determination and his own two hands, who single-handed built the beautiful park which is now Cobblestone Suntanners, and who rose to the first position in nudism:-the President of the American Sunbathing Association, Rudolph Johnson. We look forward confidently to his leadership in the coming year.
Norval Packwood echoed these sentiments in his coverage of the events:
Like so many good things, we always save the best for last, or the man who supplied the “dessert” of the meeting... none other than Rudolph himself, and his wonderful life partner, Mary. The construction of the swimming pool (Lake Rudolph) in itself is enough to heap glory on any man, and yet it was but one of the many things which were accomplished by the man who finds beauty and greatness in the simple things. The lilies of the pond, the birds of the air, and the little animals which scamper through the woods. Who finds majesty in the great trees belongs in the land which has become Cobblestone Suntanners.
Rudy has served his country well, sailing the seven seas on one of Uncle Sam's battleships but never losing touch with his native Washington mountains, and now, even though in his seventies [sic], a man among men. A man of Rudy’s accomplishments is needed and it was in recognition of his sterling qualities that he was elected to the presidency of the ASA for the coming year.
Should you question Rudy, you will learn that all he had done and all that he is is the result of having ever by his side the one who has shared with him his joys and his sorrows, has climbed with him to the mountain tops of success, and who stuck by him when it was necessary to cross valleys of discouragement, always there helping and encouraging, quietly playing her role as Mrs. Rudy. Yes, to Mary is due much credit and any glory that is Rudolph's is hers also.
On the last page of the same issue, there was an image of Rudolph, knee-deep in snow, surveying the cavity of the pool before him. It’s followed by text.
This picture was taken last winter. It shows Rudolph Johnson, now the president of the ASA, inspecting the progress which he had by then made on the swimming pool which he personally constructed for the 1950 Annual Meeting and the subsequent enjoyment of the Cobblestone Suntanners.
The pool is now complete. It is approximately thirty feet wide and a full hundred feet long. It has been dubbed "Lake Rudolph" and is one of the most beautiful pools in the country, nudist or not.
When you consider the amount of labor which this gigantic project involved, and the financial cost, you may marvel that one man undertook it alone with the principal return on his investment the enjoyment, entertainment and pleasure of his guests.13
Epilogue
Uncle Danny was conspicuously absent from the 19th national ASA convention in Washington. He offered some explanation in his address to the convention, which was read during the opening session by secretary Rose Holroyd:
It is with the deepest regret that in this year of our Lord, 1950, I am unable to rejoin my many friends at the annual conclave of the American Sunbathing Association, Inc., held in Yelm, Washington. Circumstances, long planned and beyond my personal control, even though of a domestic nature, prevent me from attending for the first time in nearly two decades. However, rest assured that, though absent in body, I shall indeed be with you in spirit. I can almost feel myself participating in your sports, your debates and lively discussions, your antics, and those unforgettable conversations around the evening campfires.
As I must now bid farewell as your de facto Executive Secretary in this unsatisfying and less companionable form, entrusted to others for presentation, it seems appropriate at this moment to reflect on the years that have meant almost more than life to me.
These years have been filled with struggle and hard work, ardent endeavor and youthful enthusiasm, high hopes and sometimes bitter disillusionment, rich fellowship and sometimes poignant hostility (et tu, Brute!). Yet, through it all, the harvest has indeed been a rich one. [...] It is with deep appreciation of this fact that I find genuine peace of mind and a sense of security as I pass the reins of leadership to [my successor], and I solicit from you, your highest loyalties, your unfailing cooperation, and support.
The many and intricate problems that I have customarily addressed at such gatherings, I now leave to others for analysis and solution. [...] Let this assurance of my continuing interest be the token that I do not bid you “Farewell,” but rather, as the French say, merely “au revoir.”
Ever faithfully and devotedly yours,
“UNCLE DANNY” (Ilsley Boone)
Boone’s message appeared to signal a “farewell” and a relinquishing of his responsibilities. However, within the subtext of Uncle Danny’s words, another message can be interpreted: that Boone was not actually saying goodbye at all, that he was not yet ready to step away from his role as a naturism’s “grand old man,” and that even in his absence from the current events, he was still a formidable and present force.
Indeed, the conflict between reformists within the organization and Boone and his loyalists was far from over, and would escalate significantly during Rudolph’s upcoming presidency. Under his leadership and amid these reforms, the organization experienced its most turbulent years, ultimately splitting into two factions, each claiming legitimacy. This period marked Rudolph as one of the most pivotal figures in the history of American nudism. Despite challenges to his leadership, his significance was ultimately recognized when he was posthumously inducted into the ASA Hall of Fame in 1965, alongside the pioneers of American nudism—including Ilsley Boone.
Read the previous chapter of this series
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Wright, E. (1950, July). “‘Black Horse’ Trouble.” The Black Horse, 27.
Johnson, R. News notes on the Cobblestone Suntanners' preparations for the 1950 A.S.A. Convention. (1950, May). Sunshine & Health.
Johnson, R. (1950, June). Cobblestone Suntanners update. Sunshine & Health.
Wright, E. (1950, May). “An Analysis and an Idea.” The Black Horse, 25.
Cinder, C. (1998). The Nudist Idea. Ultraviolet Press. ISBN: 9780965208505.
Johnson, D. (1959). The Nudists.
The editorial buffer time for the magazine was a solid three months, so although the events occurred in August, members who could not attend had to wait until November for news on what had occurred that Summer.
The stone house was regularly off-limits to nudist visitors, so Packwood’s being accommodated there says something about either his revered position in national nudism or his already-budding friendship with Rudolph and Mary Johnson, or maybe both.
Presumably, citing the previous election in Denver as illegal or illegitimate.
Official Minutes of the American Sunbathing Association Annual Meeting, August 9 to 13, inc., (1950, November). Sunshine & Health.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Sunshine & Health. (1950, November). Back page.
Grit. Gumption. Stamina. What a guy!
I wish we had something like a register of historic nudist/naturist locations. As in, Lake Rudolph has been designated a National Historic Naturist Landmark... something with legal protection in it. What a dream...
This was a fascinating read and I think just the story of the building of the house and pool deserve their own telling apart from the ASA politics aspect. I have the greatest respect for those people who build something amazing and difficult with little help. I am glad the house survives but a little sad that the pool has been reclaimed by nature. Who owns the property now? It must have been a tremendously poignant moment for Evan Nicks to stand in the now weed beset pool built by his ancestor.