Old Forge Pond’s familiar yellow lighthouse a beacon for Magda Kjellesvig Freeman
The camp that sits behind the bright yellow lighthouse and boathouse at the edge of the Old Forge Pond had a special visitor on Monday, October 24. It was Magda Kjellesvig Freeman, who was born in the camp 91 years ago on September 6, 1920.
Accompanied by her daughters, Tina Bryan and Luisa Freeman, and her son Belmont Freeman, she was given a tour of the house and grounds by current owner, Andy Mazloom. Magda Freeman’s Norwegian father, Magne Kjellesvig, a civil engineer, and her Cuban-born mother Trina, lived in Cuba where they raised their family.
His work in Cuba also took him to other locations in South America.
The couple, who had four children before Magda’s birth, spent their summers in North Carolina before returning to Havana each fall.
But after a doctor told them that their children needed a healthier climate and should spend their summers farther north, Kjellesvig responded to an ad in the New York Times about property being sold in the Adirondacks.
He bought the camp on the Old Forge Pond, sight unseen, from Henry and Elvira Mott of Manhattan in December 1918.
The following summer the Kjellesvig family spent their first summer there, naming it Camp Scandia.
A Norwegian flag flew from the flagpole in front of the camp, Magda said.
When Magda was due to be born in the late summer or early fall of 1920, a registered nurse was hired to spend the summer with her mother at Camp Scandia and when her time came, Old Forge physician Dr. Robert S. Lindsay delivered her in a small room her father had built onto the original camp for that very purpose.
Dr. Lindsay’s bill for Magda’s delivery was $25 and a box of Cuban cigars, she said. “I was born here in 1920 on Labor Day Monday,” she said as she walked into the neat bedroom where she was born, “but I never came back to the camp, not until today.”
After her birth, the family never returned to Camp Scandia, she said, because her father rented it out every summer until it was sold in 1924.
The family however, continued to spend their summers in Old Forge in rented housing until 1931.
During those summers Magda made some special friends among the local children.
She still has fond memories of Tina Cassia Hiltebrant Schmalhofer and her sister Rita Cassia Dennison, whose father owned Cassia’s Barber Shop. Magda said she corresponded with Tina, until she passed away several years ago.
“There were also the Marks girls—Helen and Joan. We rented a house near the Catholic Church and we used to walk down the hill and go swimming. Then we would go to the library that was upstairs over the firehouse. We had so much fun,” she said.
During the tour of Magda’s birthplace, owner Andy Mazloom, who purchased the camp in the late 1990s from his great uncle Jim Wurz, said that the camp and the lighthouse had been painted yellow when his great uncle, who was a farmer, bought the camp in 1945.
“He didn’t have a lot of money but he had plenty of old yellow tractor paint at the farm. He brought it up here and used it on the house and the lighthouse,” he said.
Although it’s been repainted many times, the camp and lighthouse have remained that same bright “tractor yellow” that attracts countless photographers each year.
Magda, whose husband Robert Belmont Freeman passed away in 1995 and presently lives in Maryland with her daughter Tina, said she was very impressed with the camp and the room where she was born.
“It’s such a lovely room, and Andy has invited us to come back next year. He said we could stay in the camp to celebrate my 92nd birthday on September 6th, and we’re planning to do that. It will be a family reunion,” said Magda, excitedly, “and I’ll sleep in the room where I was born.”
Town of Webb Historian Peg Masters, also accompanied Magda’s visit to the camp, and the Historical Association has made copies of Kjellesvig family photos that were taken during that era when the family vacationed in Old Forge.
