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Oglebay Institute Inspires Generations

Family Roots: Oglebay Institute Nature Camps Provide a Legacy of Experiences for the Rybeck Family

Wheeling native Ted Rybeck calls himself “one of the many fans” of Oglebay Institute, and his participation – and that of his family – explains his passion.

A member of the third generation of Rybecks to enjoy OI’s nature programs, Ted was a camper and then counselor at OI’s Junior Nature Camp from 1972 until 1983, under the camp’s legendary director, Billie Altemus. Eighteen years later, Ted returned with his wife, Ellen Brodsky, and their two young daughters, Mia and Emma, and began eight more summers of teaching week-long classes under camp directors Jeff Altemus and Natasha Diamond. Each summer focused on a different nature topic that Ellen and Ted would spend a year developing into a hands-on session.

Ted Rybeck and Ellen Brodsky at Oglebay Institute's Junior Nature Camp
Longtime counselors at Oglebay Institute’s Junior Nature Camp- Ted Rybeck and wife Ellen Brodsky in 2009.

“In my 12 years as a camper and a counselor back in the 70s and 80s, and in my more recent years as a teacher there, I’ve never been more inspired by the quality of the experience Oglebay Institute provides,” says Ted.

As the youngest of five from Wheeling, Ted saw all four of his siblings go off to Junior Nature Camp before he got his chance: Charles (Chick), Dan, Blanche and Abe.  The next generation followed suit, so by the time Ted and Ellen returned to teach, they had plenty of family there. In addition to their daughters, there were cousins Coretta Rybeck Garlow, Ry Garlow, Naomi Rybeck, Gabe Rybeck, Shoshana Rybeck, Sam Rybeck and Abe Rybeck, as well as “virtual-cousin” Charlotte Reuben and second cousin Jack Krivit.

“Each of our family members loves something about the camp that’s unique to them, but they all appreciate how OI’s nature program brings different ages together so effectively,” Ted relates.

OI as an Extended Family

The family’s passion for Oglebay Institute’s programs began in the late 1920s when Wheeling was offered the Oglebay estate as a park. “At that time, city government questioned whether enough locals would use the property to justify its upkeep,” Ted says. “But hundreds from the Wheeling area rallied to support the creation of Oglebay Park.” To encourage public support, Ted’s grandparents, Samuel “Ry” Rybeck and Rosalind “Buddie” Rybeck, pitched a tent on the grounds of the proposed park during the summer with their two little boys, Arthur (Ted’s father, the late Dr. Art Rybeck of Wheeling) and Walter (currently residing in Washington, D.C.). Ry would commute to work downtown at the Stifel department store, then return to the tent each evening.

Rybecks at Waddington Farm
Late 1920’s camping at Waddington Farm to encourage its acceptance by Wheeling as Oglebay Park. l-r Art (sitting,) Walt hiding behind his Mother, Buddie; visiting friends, Sidney & Jeanette Good, with their children Joan & Sid.

The community campaign succeeded, and the two boys spent their childhoods “waking up early to follow West Virginia’s first forester, A.B. Brooks, on the trails at Oglebay,” Ted relates. “They and their parents loved the experience so much that they ended up asking to become the first youth members of Oglebay Institute back when the organization started in 1930. Families continued coming to the park, and Buddie’s gathering of kids for story reading and activities evolved into the day camps that continue today.”

Another favorite activity was folk dancing, under the tutelage of OI’s first international folk dance director, Jane Farwell.

Ted explains: “Jane charismatically magnetized Wheeling youth to Oglebay Institute in the late 1930s, including Art and Walt, Billie Brasch Altemus and Martha Darrah Kulp. Billie and Martha ran OI’s Junior Nature Camp during the 1970s and 1980s, with folk dancing lessons they had learned 40 years earlier from Jane.”

Rosalind “Buddie” Greenbaum Rybeck (left) and Sam “Ry” Rybeck with Ry’s parents Herman and Fannie, sons (l-r) Art, Walt, and Lindy, their collie at the Bettie Zane Place farmhouse where they lived.
Rosalind “Buddie” Greenbaum Rybeck (left) and Sam “Ry” Rybeck with Ry’s parents Herman and Fannie, sons (l-r) Art and Walt, and Lindy, their collie, at the Bettie Zane Place farmhouse where they lived.

For the Rybecks, OI became an extended family. Ry and Buddie originally came to Wheeling in the early 1920s from New York City, after Ry returned from serving in France during World War I, and Buddie graduated from Teacher’s College at Columbia University. Buddie had lost her only sibling to a childhood sickness, and then lost both her parents to the 1918 flu epidemic.

“The warmth she and Ry found in the Wheeling community made her feel immediately at home,” Ted offers. “In that same spirit, when Ry became a leader of the ‘Live Wire’ young adult group within the Wheeling Chamber of Commerce, he coined a nickname that survives to this day for Wheeling – ‘The Friendly City.’”

OI in War and Peace

Art and Walt never forgot what they learned at OI and even found time for bird walks when their Army units stationed them near one another in Europe during World War II.

OI influenced Walt’s path when he returned from the war as well. He chose to finish his G.I. Bill education at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, the alma mater of his former folk dance teacher at OI, Jane Farwell. At Antioch, Walt organized Sunday morning nature walks on the college’s nature reserve, a la the OI Sunday morning hikes with A.B. Brooks. At a folk dance in nearby Dayton, Ohio, Walt had a first date with Erika Schulhof, a fellow bird lover, and the two have now been married for 61 years.

As a young columnist for Dayton’s newspaper, Walt helped spur a movement to build a new Dayton nature museum, drawing on his own high school job curating Oglebay Institute’s nature museum under A.B. Brooks.  In Walt’s 2011 memoir, Re-Solving the Economic Puzzle, he describes his career-long work on international land reform issues that go back to his growing up with OI. He and Erika returned to Wheeling in 2011 to give a talk on the memoir at OI’s Schrader Environmental Education Center.

Walt Rybeck at Oglebay Institute nature day camp.
Walter Rybeck leading a nature walk at Oglebay Institute’s nature day camp in 1940.

During World War II, Art was asked to teach his Army unit about poisonous snakes based on his OI training and he continued his nature study interests during his service at the end of the war in the Philippines and Japan. Back in the U.S., Art met his future wife, Sivia Brody, on an American Youth Hostel canoe trip in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Art had learned to canoe at OI’s Terra Alta camp, and the cultural spectrum of OI programs helped him woo his nature-loving fiance to the Friendly City when she graduated as a teacher from Jersey City State College, and he graduated on the G.I. Bill from the University of Pennsylvania Dental School. When the newlyweds finished camping on their honeymoon and moved to Wheeling, they spent their first summer and fall living out of a tent in Ry and Buddie’s backyard in order to save money for their first home.

Art Rybeck and Sivia Brody met on an Egg Harbor River canoe trip in the late 1940s. Art later wooed Sivia back to Wheeling with the added attraction of Oglebay Institute’s programs.
Art Rybeck and Sivia Brody met on an Egg Harbor River canoe trip in the late 1940s. Art later wooed Sivia back to Wheeling with the added attraction of Oglebay Institute’s programs.

Ripple Effects

In keeping with their passion for learning, Sivia and Art raised their five children participating in the full range of OI’s year-round classes and programs. As a senior at Wheeling Park High School, Ted wrote his college application essay on how he had been shaped by OI’s Junior Nature Camp and Terra Alta Mountain Camp. Before he proposed to his wife, Ellen, he brought her to Wheeling with a first stop at OI’s Spring Folk Dance Camp to meet his parents.

Decades later, both of Ellen and Ted’s daughters are interested in becoming educators. Emma, their youngest, will be going off to college this fall. Her college application included an extra page with the following prompt: “Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it.” She responded with a statement on the impact that OI’s Junior Nature Camp had on her life.

Ted’s mother, Sivia, and his sister, Blanche, still reside in the Ohio Valley, where Blanche lives on the family farm that once also housed Art’s free dental clinic staffed by volunteers. Ted’s other siblings and their families, as well as Walt and Erika’s grown children – Rick Rybeck, Ellen Czaplewski and Alex Rybeck – live farther away yet report feeling a close connection with Oglebay Institute to this day.

“My brother Abe, who is board president of the National Performance Network, regularly describes Hal O’Leary’s dramatics classes at OI’s Towngate Theatre as one of the formative experiences in his artistic career path,” Ted relays. This summer, Abe travels to Wisconsin to attend a 100th anniversary celebration of Jane Farwell’s birth, at Folklore Village, which Farwell established decades ago based on her experiences teaching folk dance at OI. (See Farwell’s bio excerpts mentioning OI here: http://folklorevillage.com/t1/JaneFarwell. )

In reflecting on what OI has meant to four generations of his family, Ted says, “We would all say that our lives wouldn’t be the same without what the Institute gave us through its arts, folk dancing, theater, opera, music, museums and nature programs. We continue to be inspired by the original vision of Earl Oglebay’s nephew, Crispin Oglebay, Nate Frame from the WVU Extension Division, and OI’s founding co-executive directors, Ruth McIntyre and Betty Eckhardt. Their decisions to recruit A.B. Brooks as their first program director and to create Oglebay Institute in conjunction with, but independent of, the Park created a dynamic and sustainable role model for applied learning and teaching. We’re grateful that Oglebay Institute helped shape who we are as a family, and it’s why we love West Virginia no matter where we live.”

(Oglebay Insitute’s Junior Nature Camp takes place July 24-30 and July 31-August 6 at Camp Giscowheco.  For more information of Junior Nature Camp or any of the hundreds of annual arts and nature programs at Oglebay Institute, call 304-242-6855 or visit www.oionline.com)

Understanding Art: Master Photographer Jay Stock Captures “Just People”

Blogger Connects with Faces in Gripping Portraits by Jay Stock

I’m going to preface this blog on photographer Jay Stock with a confession: I don’t understand art. It’s something I hide from friends and do my best to keep under wraps because a modern woman in her thirties who earned both a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Fine Arts should understand something about art. I’ve spent the better part of my life reading books, playing with cameras, and listening to NPR. That should cover my bases, right? But deep down, I’d be lying if I said I really enjoyed art. I can’t recognize it, or dissect it, and thus; I don’t think I appreciate it.

Consequently, when Oglebay Institute asked me to attend the opening reception for the new exhibit, “Just People,” by local photographer Jay Stock I groaned inwardly. How was I going to convey the importance of an exhibit if I didn’t know what I was seeing? Ultimately, I decided I’d show up at the Stifel Fine Arts Center and fake it.

I read his bio before the show. Jay Stock turns 93 this month, and the term “local photographer” doesn’t do him justice, as his photography career spans 72 years. At age 18 he began to take photos while serving in the army, and he continued this pursuit after returning home, marrying, and going to work in the coal mines of Ohio. He attended The Progressive School of Photography in New Haven, Connecticut, and eventually opened a studio in Martins Ferry. And while that might have been a comfortable place for some people to land, Stock went on to become the first photographer to exhibit his work in the United States Capital Building in Washington, D.C. His “Faces of Today’s American Indian” was exhibited at the White House, and he has amassed more awards than any other photographer. Jay Stock is one of only a handful of living members of the Photographic Hall of Fame. He’s traveled the world capturing people on film, and now a collection of these photographs is hanging in the Stifel Fine Arts Center.

Jay Stock
Jay Stock by Gail Nogle.
Jay Stock "Just People" Exhibit
Photo by Kim Whitman

I slipped into the reception and followed the crowd as they trickled past the images on the wall. As the title of the show promised, the black and white photographs depict people. They sit, they stand, they work, they hold signs and babies. I recognized Doc and Chickie Williams, but Stock’s subjects were strangers, mostly: Native Americans, Amish, coal miners, a nun. As I watched visitors quietly stare into all of the framed faces I began to realize that there was nothing expected of me here. Nobody was waiting at the end of the exhibit with a clipboard and a series of probing questions. My job, as a viewer, as the person experiencing Jay Stock’s photography, was to look and to feel. And so I let my guard down and pocketed my notebook. By the time I made my way to the second floor, I was really looking into these faces, and I began to feel an inkling of a connection.

I was lucky to have a chance to talk with Stock’s daughter, Georgette Stock, about her father’s long career, but she told me that her dad “wasn’t born with the gift of photography; he worked at it.” I find that difficult to believe, but she shares memories of his early days establishing himself here in the Ohio Valley. “Years ago, when my mother and he were starting their business…mom would look in the paper and find out the engagement announcements.” Then they’d shoot the wedding. She told me that she still meets people who fondly remember her father taking their wedding photos.

When I asked her about “Just People,” Georgette told me, “It’s really a retrospective of his passion for the world. He loves people, he loves diversity.” But she also assured me that while her father’s name is on the exhibit, his career in photography was very much a product of his lifelong partnership with his wife, Georgette’s mother, Julia Mae Stock.

Jay Stock and daughters
Jay Stock and his daughters. Photo by Russ Brown.

“She was so much a part of everything,” Georgette told me, recalling how Jay and Julia built their first darkroom in Julia’s parents’ kitchen, and how Julia would iron the brides’ dresses. “She was just a really remarkable lady. They were a team; they did it together.”

When you visit “Just People,” you’ll no doubt connect with some of Stock’s subjects, but I can’t tell you which ones will strike you. Though I’ve spent time in the beautiful desert southwest, the photographs that most struck me were those of West Virginia, of a time and a place right here and yet long gone.  I don’t come from a mining family, so the image of two men about to descend into a mine, titled “Working in Hell,” felt personally foreign but still gave me a strong sense of place and struck an indelible West Virginia-chord. Nearby, a photo titled “The Coal Miner’s Daughter” showed a sooty-faced miner proudly holding up his infant girl. Beneath his hands, black with coal dust, the caption read: “To be loved as to love brings happiness.”

Brad Johnson, director of art education at Oglebay Institute, considered Stock a few years ago during a 2012 Stifel exhibit, explaining Stock’s innate ability to reveal more than just the faces of his subjects. “Jay can go anywhere and work with any group, even groups that typically don’t like to be photographed,” Johnson said. “He becomes personally involved with his subjects. People just get a sense of comfort with Jay. As a result, he captures images that most could never get. That personal connection is always apparent in his photographs.”

Jay Stock's "America the Beautiful"
“America the Beautiful” by Jay Stock.

I went back to see the exhibit a week later when the busyness of the reception had evaporated and the photos hung silently on the walls. I’d been continuously caring for my son, who’d just had his tonsils removed, and watching the tragedy unfold in Orlando. I was drawn to a photo of two people holding hands as they walked down a road, about to disappear into a blanket of fog. Titled “Mother and Son,” the caption read: “Feeling that warm clasp and seeing the bright eyes that look at you with trust compels us to pledge that whatever wisdom and strength we have will be given making a pathway cleared of the stumbling blocks of hate, war, bigotry and selfishness.” It was as though that photograph appeared at a moment when I would truly understand it. As Georgette reminded me a few days later, “The arts transport you beyond where you are. The arts bring hope. The arts bring life.”

Jay Stock's "Water and Land"
“Water and Land” by Jay Stock.

I probably still don’t appreciate the subtle nuances of each piece or admire the lighting in this photo or the shadows in that one. But I connected with the mother in that photograph. I felt, for a moment, what she felt, and understood why I was looking at her. The time and space between my world and hers dwindled, for a second, until whatever separated us dissipated entirely.

Jay Stock’s “Just People” will be shown at Oglebay Institute’s Stifel Fine Arts Center through August 12. Even if you don’t think you understand art, I’d urge you to meet the people in Stock’s photographs. They have things to say.

– Laura Jackson Roberts, author

(For more information, please call the Oglebay Institute’s Stifel Fine Arts Center at 304-242-7700 or visit www.oionline.com . “Just People” can be viewed free of charge  Monday – Friday 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturdays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.)