Buck's Rock history

Doctor Bulova was aided by American relatives who owned the Bulova Watch Company in moving to the United States in 1940.

In 1941, the Children’s Foundation, a non-profit based in New York City, established a school in the Merryall region of New Milford, Connecticut.

With a unique opportunity to reshape the institution with funding from the Children’s Foundation, Ernst and Ilse packed a mattress in the back of their car in the summer of 1942 and headed north to research camp life all throughout New England.

That led directly to the establishment of Buck’s Rock Work Camp in 1943, which would provide adolescents the opportunity to serve their community through farming and machine repair in an environment where the campers were allowed to create their own schedule and exercise their independence.

The lesson was that all work is valuable. ''Actually, working hard is neither tiring nor disagreeable, when what you do makes sense,'' Doctor Bulova said in an interview with The New York Times in 1962.

Doctor Bulova's wife, who had been intensely involved in the camp, died in 1987.

Even after his 1990 marriage to Hertha Schleich, he kept a house on the property, to which he faithfully returned each summer from various European retreats where he spent the rest of the year.

When it was again sold in 1995, the name became the Buck's Rock Camp for Performing and Creative Arts.