Innisfree -- 15 year reunion

MILANVILLE -- Innisfree has been on the River Road in Milanville for over 15 years, yet few locals know exactly what goes on there; or if they think they do, their impressions may be based on old memories of Innisfree Corporation's organized camp program in the summers of 1970 and 1971.

Spearheading the energy behind the obtaining the funding to make the original down-payment on the organization's Milanville facility were Bud Rue as president, Bill Brown, and Clarke Maylone, three teachers from Montclair, New Jersey. The educational program they and their associates organized was idealistic and not atypical of that era.

Since the discontinuation of the original camp program in 1971, Innisfree has remained open, with some interruptions, as a not-for-profit "public eating and drinking place." It now operates a hostel and conference center, in addition to providing corporate sponsorship to the Innisfree Growth Laboratory.

Ann Rue, who with her husband Bud, makes the 250-mile round trip from their suburban New Jersey home every weekend (and has for the last three years), explains that one of Innisfree's present services is "to provide lodging and meals for young people of limited means who have an appreciation for the area.

The people Ann was talking about have been coming, sometimes alone or in couples, and some in groups as large as 70. Nearly every weekend, Bud and Ann serve as host and hostess to educational and recreational groups from secondary schools, social service agencies, colleges, and private industry. Since no one at Innisfree draws a salary for their efforts, costs are kept to an absolute minimum. Home-cooked meals are served family style in the main lodge.

The most recent group to stay at Innisfree was a student organization from Lawrence High School in New Jersey, where Bud Rue is a teacher. The group is called the Innisfree Club, and exists to foster peer-group interdependence and friendships in the school. Members of the club commit not to use drugs or alcohol or create a disturbance in the area on their weekend visits to Milanville and the river at Skinners Falls. (Winter groups enjoy sliding down the hill on truck innertubes.) Typically, before each warm-weather group goes home at the end of the weekend, Rue accompanies them to the rapids area there, and together the group collects several garbage bags full of empty beer cans, broken glass, etc. discarded by canoers and others who are not concerned about the ecology of the area. Rue reports that he witnesses positive effects from these group-building exercises at Innisfree when he sees the students in school, back in New Jersey.

An example of the type of large group which Innisfree would like to attract more frequently is the Personal Growth Laboratory (PGL) from Trenton State College. Beginning in October of 1984, PGL began using the Innisfree facility for its weekend workshops in interpersonal communications, sometimes filling the place to capacity.

When the college cancelled the weekend experience early last month for budgetary reasons, Innisfree and some of the professional group-facilitators who were involved stepped in and agreed to take a financial loss in order to salvage what they viewed as a valuable program. The ensuing weekend was a success, and there seemed to be sufficient interest to warrant planning another similar Innisfree Growth Lab in the spring of 1986.