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History
 Spring
Lake Ranch, founded in 1932, is the creation of Wayne Sarcka, an immigrant
from Finland, and his wife, Elizabeth Man, from Long Island. Wayne had
worked in youth camps during World War I with shell-shocked British soldiers
in Mesopotamia. Elizabeth, whose brother suffered from schizophrenia,
had worked as a social worker in New York settlement houses, for the Girl
Scouts, and the League of Nations Association.
While hiking to Killington Mountain on their honeymoon, Wayne and Elizabeth
came upon Spring Lake and were taken with its pristine beauty. A year
later they purchased land that included Spring Lake and an old farmhouse.
They went to work restoring the farmhouse and several summers later, with
hopes of starting a summer camp, they took in several boys from New York
City. The boys were put to work on the farm mending buildings, taking
care of animals and enjoying the outdoors.
Wayne learned the value of outdoor, group work and play in helping young
people develop their innate strengths to combat the trauma of war or a
turbulent upbringing.  Elizabeth's
strong faith in the value of shared family life was, she believed, exemplified
in the centuries old experience of the Gheel community in Belgium where
to this day, the mentally ill are taken into the homes of townspeople
to share their lives.
Their passion and obvious talents led their friend, Dr. Bernard Glueck,
a prominent New York psychiatrist, to urge them to work with the mentally
ill on their beautiful farm in Vermont. He had long believed in the need
for alternative approaches to care for the mentally ill who need time
and space to come to terms with the effect of their illness and find new
strengths to call upon. The Sarckas boldly accepted the challenge and
Dr. Glueck and his colleagues began referring selected patients to them.
Soon others with emotional problems came and Spring Lake Ranch had begun.
"We had our critics aplenty who found fault with us for sharing our lives
with guests like that on equal terms . . . but I clung to wartime insights,
and put tools in everybody's hands."
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