4-H Challenge Club faces new challenges
By Wayne Mulzer

“Imagine a radiant sunset, sending out rays of flaming orange light to which it turns pink, purple and finally darkening shades of midnight blue. Behind you are the rolling waves of the awesome Lake Superior, reflecting the brilliant sunset in its whitecaps. Around you are good friends with whom you have just completed a few climbs on Marquette Mountain’s backside. This is where I was a week ago, and this is exactly where I was reborn,” Sarah Beth, former Menominee County 4-H Challenge member, said.

Sarah begins her senior year at Michigan State University this fall.

“As I sat on the mountain, as described above, my heart was overfilled with happiness and relief. My passion for the out-of-doors that Dale [Fountain] had instilled in me five years before came back full force. I began to realize exactly how much the Challenge program had shaped who I am and where my life is going.”

Climbing is a way of life to the members of the Menominee County 4-H Challenge Club. Dale Fountain and Clay Cody, founders of the club, dreamed of a climbing wall in the Stephenson High School multipurpose room. Working on a limited budget, Fountain, Cody and their teen leaders built a 24- by 24-foot rock wall in 1996. The wall was available for other groups to use.
As time passed, the wall became less challenging for the club members. Fountain envisioned a more complicated climbing surface that included overhangs and angles to test more advanced climbers.

However, Fountain never got to carry out his dream. In the summer of 2002, a tragic canoeing accident near Wawa, Ontario, Canada, claimed Dale Fountain’s life.

This accident could have been even more tragic if not for the friendship and support given to the 4-H Challenge members who accompanied Fountain on this canoe trip in Lake Superior Provincial Park. The Wawa Detachment of the Ontario Provincial Police provided the 4-H members with food, clean clothes and motel rooms. Counselors were called in to help the teens deal with the situation. An officer from the detachment stayed with the teens until other volunteer leaders from Menominee County could make the 400-mile trip to Wawa to bring them home.

Menominee County 4-H decided to show its gratitude to the Wawa Detachment by doing a countywide community service project. 4-H volunteers, members and friends made six quilts to donate. Sewing machines were even set up during rock wall climbing events!

Chris Gagne and Matt Ross, 4-H Challenge members who were on the Lake Superior Provincial Park canoe trip; Sue Mulzer, 4-H quilting volunteer; and Wayne Mulzer, 4-H Challenge volunteer, presented the quilts to Sgt. Smith of the Wawa Detachment on July 11, 2003.
While they were in Canada, they stopped at the Lake Superior Provincial Park headquarters to retrieve Fountain’s canoe, which was pinned in the rapids last summer and couldn’t be removed until the water receded this spring.

The club received a grant from the Menominee County 4-H Foundation and gifts from Fountain’s memorial to finish Fountain’s dream of an addition to the climbing wall at Stephenson High School.

During the 2002 Christmas break, 4-H Challenge members, volunteers, friends, students, local business people and others constructed the addition in two days. The original wall was repainted and new climbing mats and handholds were purchased. The new handholds spell out “4-H CHALLENGE” and “DALE.”

We cannot always help those who have helped us along the way. What we can do is be prepared to give assistance to others in need without knowing who they might be or when they might need us. This is why community service projects are so important.

Wayne Mulzer is a 4-H volunteer leader of the Memonimee 4-H Challenge Club.