Celebrating an enchanted little nook in Gloucester County
Lake Gilman glistens, Fred Spreng raises the colors, and Herb Shallcross sings "The Star-Spangled Banner." Then comes the announcement many in the crowd have been waiting for: Candy scramble!
Lake Gilman glistens, Fred Spreng raises the colors, and Herb Shallcross sings "The Star-Spangled Banner."
Then comes the announcement many in the crowd have been waiting for: Candy scramble!
Adults unleash showers of wrapped-up sweets, a dozen or more little kids swarm across the lawn, and the annual Lake Gilman Day celebration begins in what Denyse Spreng, who's been married to Fred for 41 years, calls "the best-kept secret in South Jersey."
Located on 100 wooded, gently sloping acres of Elk and Harrison Townships in rural Gloucester County, the community of 76 houses and perhaps 200 people surrounds a private, wishbone-shape body of water named for "Skipper" Miles Gilman, the Navy lieutenant commander and World War I veteran who dammed two spring-fed streams and created this lovely place nearly a century ago.
Imagine Mayberry as rendered by Norman Rockwell. Or, as longtime resident Clif Daniels suggests, think of "the musical Brigadoon."
That 1947 Broadway smash, about a Scottish town that comes into existence just once every 100 years, is a rather apt comparison on Lake Gilman Day. The beloved celebration - highlights include a baby-crawling contest, a floating parade, and, as the grand finale, an apple pie-eating competition - is held annually on the fourth Saturday in July.
That's when I arrive at the private pavilion and beach - no alcohol or motorized watercraft permitted, period - just before the festivities begin. Not counting the dinner break, nearly 40 events on the water, on the beach, on the ball field, and in the pavilion take 12 hours from start to finish and attract more than 100 residents.
"The place is truly magical," says Dave Diehl, the president of the Lake Gilman Owners Association. A 53-year-old electrical contractor and father of two ("My kids are out on the water right now"), he's a relative newcomer, having bought a home there in 1992.
Many Lake Gilman families go back generations, with parents often selling homes to grown children who want to return to raise their own kids. Others who have moved away make sure to be there for Lake Gilman Day.
"I've lived here since I was 15," says Barbara LeConey, 68, a retired Elk Township police clerk and mother of two, who has run the pie-eating contest with her husband, John, for more than 20 years.
"We are lovers of nature, and we prefer the quiet of a small community like this. My brother and one of my sisters also raised their families here. Because of that tradition, for the longest time it was rare for any [real estate] to be available here," adds LeConey.
"We moved into a house here when I was 2, I think," says retired letter carrier Janet Kenney, 67.
She later purchased and lived in her childhood home, selling it recently for a place in an over-55 community in Mullica Hill.
She and her twin sister Judy Deacon of Marlton wouldn't miss Lake Gilman Day; Deacon is grilling hot dogs and Kenney is in charge of the pavilion's bustling kitchen.
I catch up with Kenney after she and LeConey take first-place honors in the rolling pin-throwing competition, which involves tossing the kitchen utensils through an inner tube hanging from a tree.
"It all depends on the height and the roundness of the tube," explains Kenney, who's competed for 13 years and deploys an old-fashioned wooden rolling pin her late mother, Evelyn, used for pie crust.
While a rolling-pin toss may seem astonishingly retro to some, younger residents like Jason Rosenberry, who grew up at Lake Gilman, and husband-and-wife business partners Mark and Trish Carew - "A house came up for sale 13 years ago and we bought it instantly," says Trish, 40 - treasure the traditions.
"You don't see this in a housing development," notes Rosenberry, 32, who works in cyber security.
Indeed, the regular pancake breakfasts, ice-cream socials, and covered-dish suppers are among the amenities that persuaded Marianne Barbaro and her partner Jill Marghella to move to Lake Gilman from Moorestown eight years ago. They're raising their son in the community.
"When I first got here I felt like I was on vacation every single day. It was so peaceful," says Marghella, 49, an occupational therapist. "And that's the way we like to keep it," Barbaro, a 51-year-old transportation manager, notes.
But changing times have changed Lake Gilman. Road, tree, and lake maintenance, which are the association's responsibility, are an ongoing challenge.
"Some people complain because everybody knows everybody's business," Diehl says, adding that it can be difficult to recruit all the volunteers needed to run the social events.
And Lake Gilman can be a little too small and a little too quiet for some.
"A lot of young people don't want to be so far away from where the action is," says LeConey.
But for others, such as Leti Winter, the beauty, the charm, and the quaint ambience are more than enough.
"I love it here," says Winter, a Lake Gilman resident for more than 30 years whose husband, Hugh, 96, grew up in one of the community's original families. "I've found my spot."
As for Daniels, 68, he's deeply grateful to Skipper Gilman and others "who had the foresight to buy the land along [the two streams] and protect the quality of our water."
The retired Kingsway Regional Middle School science teacher is about to tell me about Lake Gilman's hydrology when he's called away to join his wife, Shirley, for the couples' egg-tossing contest.
Later, I ask how it went.
"We missed," laughs Daniels.
No worries.
There's always next summer.
856-779-3845@inqkriordan