Rachel Andresen - YWCA

YWCA

She began her work with the YWCA in Detroit and she also became the director of Camp Talahi. During the rest of the year she did a lot of inner-city work in Detroit. In 1942 she purchased a large farm house on eighty two acres near South Lyon, Michigan and this would become known as Pinebrook.

It was transformed into both a summer camp and a hostel for international travelers year around. She met her second husband, Arvid Andresen, a Danish landscape architect, who was on excursion and stayed at the hostel. Rachel became involved with the Michigan Council of Churches at this time and by the end of WWII, the Council was responsible for helping to re-build Europe by providing Michigan cattle and humanitarian assistance. Rachel was approached by the Ann Arbor Rotarians to set up an exchange student program in 1951 to help bridge the enormous rift of post-war hatred.

It began with a handful of German students who would live in Michigan for one year. Rachel was apprehensive of how well this concept would go over, American families taking in students of a former enemy. She managed to place all the students, many of whom barely had enough clothes to fit into one small suitcase. At the beginning of the school year they stayed at Pinebrook before they went to their host families to attend high schools in various communitites in Michigan. At the end of their academic year they stayed at Pinebrook again speaking perfect English and the American culture had envelpoed them completely.