Men participated in an educational program consisting of films, slides, bulletins and speakers to increase appreciation for conservation work. 

The Mennonites emphasized four goals in educational programming:  instruction in Mennonite heritage and mission, clarification of Christians’ relationship to state and community, deepening spiritual experience, and “promoting personal growth by teaching skills with occupational benefit for the men”. (Keim p. 87) These goals were translated into a three month study of Mennonite heritage, and all were strongly urged to participate.  The base camps benefitted from an educational director who worked with an educational secretary in MCC headquarters.  

The men used a camp library equipped with a large and assorted collection of books, magazines, and papers.  MCC provided $.75 per man per month to be used for educational purposes, including purchases for the library.

Winifred Nelson Beechy left her job as a lab technician at the Metalurgy Department at Battelle Memorial Institute to become dietician at the camp when her husband Atlee Beechy accepted the position as educational director. 

The job of feeding 150 men three meals a day, seven days a week was a challenge.  Of course, meals were not like mother put on the table at home and campers were not always happy or complimentary.  However, judgments pretty well evened out pro and con.  Looking back it is hard to believe that we could feed campers pretty well on 52 cents per day and in some places, 39 cents per day.

Fortunately, I had good precedent and an able, well training kitchen crew.  Elizabeth Sieber Hernley had preceded me and she had experience in large scale cookery.  Most of the kitchen staff was from the Lancaster and Virginia areas and they offered a few observations about the dietician—my hair was too short and I wore a wedding band—but perhaps that was not all bad.  We had conversations about these “differences” but basically they were a good crew.  (“Detour . . .Main Highway”: Our CPS Stories pp. 84-85)

Titus M. Books, ordained in the Brethren in Christ Church, performed full-time pastoral work at the Sideling Hill, Hagerstown, Luray and Grottoes camps beginning July 1, 1943.

The men published The Turnpike Echo from March 2, 1942 to August 1943. The men had proposed a regular monthly farm magazine.  Later, several men in unit 2 of Camp 106 in North Platte, Nebraska, also a soil conservation camp, became leaders in launching The Mennonite Community Magazine.

According to Keim, someone visiting the Sideling Hill camp reported that “he never saw such a godforsaken place in his life”.  (p. 46)