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Introduction to Sharp Twins Endowment Fund

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The Sharp Twins Endowment Fund is dedicated to offering one-week resident summer camp opportunities for deserving girls and boys at YMCA Camp Tecumseh.  The camp is located on 500 acres of woodlands and meadows bordering the Tippecanoe River and Richard G. Marsh Lake near Brookston, Indiana, about 80 miles northwest of Indianapolis.

Family members and friends of the Sharp Twins established the “campership” endowment fund in 2009 through the Henry County Community Foundation and with the cooperation of the Henry County YMCA in New Castle.  This initiative honors long-time New Castle residents Martha Sharp Clawson and Mary (Sharp) Wilson Pidgeon, who went to Camp Tecumseh summer camp as youngsters and later returned to serve as camp counselors.  Always remembering their camp experiences fondly, they sent some of their own children to the camp and taught camp songs to their grandchildren.

Born in New Castle on April 27, 1926, the identical twin sisters graduated from New Castle High School in 1944 and were active in local churches, Chapter H of the P.E.O., Tri Kappa, the Lady Elks Auxiliary and other community organizations.  Mary passed away in 2007 and Martha in 2009.  Both are buried in New Castle’s South Mound Cemetery.

YMCA Camp Tecumseh was established in 1924 when citizens of Delphi raised $3,000 to purchase the land which lies on a bend on the Tippecanoe River. The camp is named after Tecumseh, a Shawnee chief. Camp Tecumseh is fully accredited by the American Camping Association and currently serves over 4,000 campers every summer from throughout the Midwest USA and the world.  With a “caring Christian atmosphere,” YMCA Tecumseh has been called “Simply the best camp in Indiana, Illinois or anywhere in the Midwest.”

For more information about YMCA Camp Tecumseh, see http://www.camptecumseh.org/.  For more information on the Henry County YMCA, see http://www.henrycountyymca.org.