Waterfront Sharing

RGCA PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY For the Waterfront Committee

The following “vision statement” appears in our Ruback’s Handbook and helps to define Ruback’s Grove Camper’s Association (R.G.C.A.’s) good neighbor policy. Ruback’s Grove Campers Association is a non-profit corporation devoted to the purpose of maintaining recreation facilities, helpful services, and a pleasant environment for its members and their guests.  In order to meet the purposes of the Association, all members – their families, guests, or tenants must cooperate to achieve the mutual enjoyment of the community. We feel that it is the obligation of us all, as members of this Association, to so conduct ourselves at all times that our fellow campers will always consider us a good neighbor.  

The following background, perspective and philosophy is offered to help clarify the good neighbor policy as it relates to the waterfront and its use. When RGCA was founded in the late 1920s, it was founded as a Methodist membership group. It was not intended to be exclusive of other members, it simply was the genesis for an organization made up of a friendship circle established through common interests as members of a church community. This friendship circle and the Methodist ideals of sharing, good neighborliness, fairness and well-being, were the basis for the original vision statement of RGCA and are still the foundation of our RGCA mission, vision, and rules today.  The values of friendship and good neighborliness remain the foundation, the cornerstone for all decisions affecting RGCA from common usage, waterfront access, and shared agreements to “family” events and community activities. 

These shared common values have defined the unique and special qualities about Ruback’s Grove that continue to make it an ideal and an idyllic retreat for personal and family recreation.  In the spirit of shared and common values, friendship, and good neighborliness, the original members attempted to establish a “fair” waterfront usage plan as it pertained to all of the RGCA members. To insure this “fairness”, our forefathers kept all of the waterfront areas in our grove as lands held in common. The original map shows these common areas as the waterfront area running from one end of the grove to the other. Thus, no individual camper or camp “owns” waterfront, rather, all the members collectively share the ownership of the waterfront and all have the same rights, privileges and access to all RGCA waterfront and beachfront areas in the grove.  Realizing that modern-day concepts of “ownership” can affect the understanding of the RGCA philosophy and rules, it becomes the responsibility of the RGCA Board to ensure that the good neighbor policies of RGCA are followed and that problems are resolved fairly.  This has worked very successfully over the years and continues to be the policy today on the part of the Board. Reminders of the good neighbor policy are important especially when confronting neighbor and waterfront issues.  

Since the original members of the grove were friends, shared usage was a natural occurrence based on friendly alliances. Since RGCA still is largely comprised of family, friends and acquaintances of the original membership body, these alliances are continually formed and reformed and the spirit of the grove remains intact. However, looking to the future, it is important that all members understand the concept of “beachfront common” and “shared usage” so that new members who may not have established relationships with members in the grove, have the opportunity to partake of the same rights and privileges of the other members. This is particularly true when dealing with the waterfront issues since it is the expectation of RGCA that members will maintain a spirit of generosity and friendship when considering the privileges and needs of campers not directly on the water and, that campers not directly on the water, will respect the privileges and needs of campers situated directly on the water.

-Joan Brooks     8/28/04

“People who secure privileges for themselves come to regard these as "rights", and when others, equally deserving, wish to enjoy the same privileges, they are regarded as infringing on those "rights".   

Richard T. Wayand July 20, 1976