Ron Stephenson

Camp Ellis Ron Stephenson

On April 15, 1943 Camp Ellis opened and over the next couple of years 130,000 troops were trained there and 5000 German prisoners of war were housed there. This 20,000 acre camp which contained 2,200 buildings was built in the middle of farmland in Illinois and closed down in December 1945. Over the next five years it was used sparingly by the National Guard in the summertime. In 1949 Ronnie twelve years old and Larry thirteen years old arrived with their family to this deserted camp where their father Colonel Dale Stephenson would be closing the base down preparing for it to be sold to be used as farmland again. Everything had been left intact over the four years that the camp had not been used. The Stephenson brothers explored the camp with the feel of the ghosts from the past soldiers who went through the camp and were lost in the Second World War. Going to school in Ipava, Illinois the closest town of only five hundred people the boys learn to play basketball and their first encounter with girls. The basketball team with the two boys was propelled to a new height that the school and town had never seen.