The Alex Canja Story
The Alex Canja Story
It’s the remarkable story of one man’s triumph as he went from orphan to executive, from being alone to creating an extended family of grateful graduates of what we now call his Flying Eagle Formula. It’s the story of how he took what he knew of what a boy needs to succeed and created a deeply meaningful program to deliver it…
An Orphan Beginning
In 1905, a 28 year old Clement Peter Canja traveled from Hungary to the United States with exactly $20 to his name. Two years later, 20 year old Irena Harpau arrived in the U.S. from Hungary and she and Clement were married later that same year. In 1908 their first child, Alex’s older sister Mary, was born. Two more children followed: Clement in 1911 and Victor in 1912. A fourth child, Octavian, came in 1914.
But by 1919, Irena had filed for divorce citing extreme cruelty, especially to the children and in 1920 they were divorced. But Irena did not stay single for long. That same year she married 23 year old Alexandru Bilka – also from Hungary. Their first child, Alex, arrived on August 11, 1921. His sister, Geraldine, was born in 1923. However, that was the same year their father left the family and was never heard from again.
Alex (left) at 8 years old in Flint
Afterward, always going by Canja and never Bilka, Alex lived with his mother and was especially close to his sister, Gerry. That all changed when he was eleven. In 1932, Irena left 11 year old Alex and 9 year old Gerry behind and traveled back to Hungary to check on property her father had left to her.
She never returned. The responsibility of caring for Alex and Gerry fell to Alex’s oldest sister, 24 year old Mary, by then divorced with a child of her own. But times were tough. The Great Depression, which began in 1929, was in full swing. 1931 saw food riots and bank failures. While Gerry stayed with Mary, Alex was sent to live with brother Clem. It didn’t go well. Clem “was a miserable person” said those who knew him. Alex soon left to live at the Flint YMCA where he worked through junior high and high school in the kitchen in return for room and board.
Life at the YMCA
Many people don’t know that the YMCA, the Young Men’s Christian Association, was started in England in 1844 to give young men an alternative to street life. It moved to the United States with the same mission and during the Depression.
Life at the Y was hard. Alex sold newspapers to support himself, earning a penny for each paper. He said he used it to buy 5 cent candy bars for meals. He never forgot that he once stood outside an entire day and only made three cents.
Living on his own at the Y also made life at school difficult. He had to motivate himself every day to keep going. He said he could have ended up on the streets or in jail as many others he knew did. And there was something else. Anti-immigration sentiment had been building and he said he couldn’t shake the feeling that he didn’t fit in, even though in high school he was voted Class President.
But the Flint YMCA offered a way out. It was there that Alex learned to swim and dive. By 1932 most Ys had added dormitories, gyms, and swimming pools and were focusing on improving mind, body, and spirit. Alex began to compete on the YMCA swim team.
Diving is a sport of precision. Perhaps it taught him about control and discipline or perhaps he brought control and discipline to diving. In any event, he needed it to survive. In his later life he never talked about growing up at the Y or about growing up in Flint, but discipline and control surely helped.
And along with learning how to swim and dive, he said he also learned something else that was summed up by the poet William Henly in his poem, Invictus:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate;
I am the captain of my soul!
Those words kept Alex going through difficult times. He believed he had the power to shape his life and determine his own destiny. He believed that he could succeed. And he formed a powerful belief in the importance of being treated with fairness and respect. It was here, while living at the YMCA, that his Flying Eagle Formula of success began to take shape.
A Scholarship Made The Difference
The discipline and control that brought Alex success on the diving board also brought him to the attention of Matt Mann, the legendary diving coach at the University of Michigan. Alex was offered an athletic scholarship and came to Ann Arbor in the fall of 1940.
Alex, front center
In 2015, Sports Illustrated carried a story about the 1936 Olympic divers Frank Kurtz and Marshall Wayne. “They were early aerialists,” the story said, “twisting and spinning and knifing in free fall. They had a sixth sense for midair navigation, knew tricks to outwit gravity—or at least suspend it for a while.”
That was also Alex. Kurtz and Wayne must have been his heroes. When they competed in the 1936 Olympics he was 15, living at the Y and just learning to dive. When the 1940 Olympics were cancelled because of World War II, he was just starting college at the U of M on his diving scholarship. Kurtz and Wayne became part of the Army Air Corps as bomber pilots.
In the Sports Illustrated story, Bob Clotworthy, a gold medalist diver in 1956 and diving historian, noted that many top divers became pilots and explained: “These guys were used to being upside down in the air at a time when not many other people were. They’re doing twists and somersaults and acrobatic maneuvers. World War II comes along, who’s better to put up there?”
At the age of 21 and in the middle of his promising diving career, Alex was drafted. Perhaps with Kurtz and Wayne in mind, he joined the Army Air Corps; not as a pilot, though. He was a signals operator, using Morse code to send instructions to aid the pilots in the air.
Like so many members of the Greatest Generation, he never talked about World War II, even though he landed on the beach at Normandy on D-Day + 2 and must have seen horrific things. As the GIs approached Omaha Beach, their landing craft hit sandbars and they were forced to wade through the water to reach the shore and then walk across an open beach as they were gunned down by German soldiers. Over 2,000 died. On the second day of the invasion, the dead bodies of GIs still lay on the beach and floated in the water. He never talked about it. His sister, Gerry, died in childbirth while he was in the Army. He didn’t talk about that, either.
But one story about his life that he did share was of when he first came to the University. He was unprepared, he said, for the academic rigor and ended up with a failing grade in his freshman English course. A failure meant the end of his scholarship, his diving, his college education and his future. He had nothing and no one to fall back on and was looking at the end of his dream. On a wing and a prayer he went to his professor to ask for a second chance. She believed in him. She changed his failing grade to passing to give him that second chance. He never ever forgot her and her act of kindness. Every Christmas season until the day she died, he sent her a card to let her know she was remembered and appreciated.
After the war, he returned to the University of Michigan and intensified his concentration on diving. He became Michigan’s NAAU high diving champion, a three-time All-American diver and swimmer, and Captain of the swim team.
And he found one more thing to concentrate on…
Alex Finds Tess…and His Calling
It all started with a crying girlfriend – at least that’s how Tess tells it. “I was sitting next to her in class at the beginning of my second year of college at the University of Michigan and she was sobbing: ‘I’ll never speak to that Alex Canja again!’”
But maybe it started before that because maybe Alex had his eye on Tess all along! The very next day he asked her to join him for a Coke date. Two years later they were married. They graduated in 1948, Alex with a major in speech and minors in journalism and English, and Tess with a degree in journalism. With their U of M connections they found good jobs in Chicago in corporate public relations. But something didn’t seem quite right. Alex wanted to become a teacher. He wanted to provide the kind of adult guidance and mentoring that had been missing in his own life. They packed up and came back to the University of Michigan where Alex earned a master’s degree in English.
He took his first teaching job at Ypsilanti High School where he taught English, coached swimming and was mentor to the Quill and Scroll journalism Honor Society. It was there that more of his Flying Eagle Formula started to take shape. A letter written many years later tells the story:
That letter, written about an event that had taken place forty-six years earlier, shows the lasting effect the right message can have on a child.
Alex was happy as a teacher. He was fulfilling his personal mission and was making a good salary – $3,000 a year. When he moved on to Grosse Pointe High School to teach English and coach the swim team, his salary almost doubled to nearly $6,000. He was also managing the pool and teaching swimming at Barton Hills Country Club in Ann Arbor.
That was enough money to allow Tess to be a full-time mom to Debbie, born in 1954, and Jeff, born in 1956. But it wasn’t nearly enough to buy a house or even a reliable car. Yet, when he saw a tiny ad in a local paper, “Camp for Sale,” an idea took hold and wouldn’t let go.
It must have seemed the perfect fit. As a teacher he had the summers off and it was right in line with his desire to give young boys the guidance he’d wanted growing up. Before they’d ever bought a house, Alex and Tess bought a camp.
Dear Mr. Canja –
You may not remember me, but I was one of the students who worked on the school paper in Ypsilanti when you were our counselor. One day you were so proud of the work we did that you took us all out to the Malt Shoppe for ice cream. We sat down and the waitress came and took our order. Then she stood there. She just stood there until you told her to get on with it. We wanted ice cream! Finally she left and brought us our sundaes and sodas.
Perhaps you didn’t know it, but maybe you did. Black kids like me could buy ice cream at the Malt Shoppe, but we couldn’t sit down inside to eat it. I went home and told my parents that I had integrated the Malt Shoppe!
You gave me the courage to do what I had to do in life. I became a high school counselor and what I tried to do for my students is what you did for me – instill in them the courage they would need as they moved on with their lives.
A New Career
But when the next spring rolled around, they found that while, yes, it was on a beautiful lake, it wasn’t much of a camp – just a couple of buildings and logs for a dock. Not exactly the vision they’d had in mind. But fate had stepped in. That winter Alex had been asked to move to Michigan’s capital city, Lansing, to help the newly elected education Superintendent of Public Instruction as his Executive Assistant and later, Deputy Superintendent. That new job provided the funds for the vision to take shape. (And one of the first things he bought was a new diving board!)
Alex Puts the Formula to Work
Alex had a few mottos he lived by. “Never complain and never explain” was one he used to help him get through hardships while growing up. And the one that helped him excel was this: “If you are going to do a job, do it right!” He certainly brought that motto to Camp Flying Eagle. It was a labor of love and into it he poured his best. He was determined to produce a future for campers that was different from his own past
It worked.
From parents:
“You were such an influence on the most important years of our sons’ lives, exemplifying love of nature, and compassion for others. We can see it in their way with babies and animals, and trees and flowers. And each one works so well with others. They lead firmly, but gently, even in the work place. Those lessons in relationships were taught by you. We can never thank you enough. You did for them, that which we could not do. We will be ever grateful.” Erv and Marian Korroch
From campers:
“I hope you understand what a formative experience that Camp Flying Eagle has had on so many of our lives. I don’t think we were capable at the time of comprehending or appreciating how much of yourselves you put into creating such a wonderful opportunity for all of us. But I hope you do know you have hundreds and hundreds of boys-now-men who have always thought of you as parents to us. For many years I have followed the Canja/Black example by becoming an educator. Please know that the lessons that all of you taught us are still being passed on to amazing young men and women every year. And be assured that your lessons and example still live on and will continue to be passed forward for many, many years…Dan Schnur
“I thank you for the difference you made in my life. You gave something to hundreds of boys that they will never forget and for which they are better people.” Tim Thieme
I can’t begin to tell you how my summers at Flying Eagle have enriched my life in so many ways! Jorge Kuri
To this day I have many wonderful memories of that time. It really made a very positive impact on me and my life. Jack Scollard
I can’t tell you how many times I have thought about the wonderful times I had at Camp Flying Eagle, both as a camper and as a counselor. Tom Doerr
From counselors:
“I want you to know that my memories and appreciation for both of you will live on within me for my entire life. You have had a positive influence on hundreds of lives. Your work ethic, leadership, enthusiasm, caring and compassion were clearly your trademark at CFE.” Steve Markham
“The ‘teaching’ experiences we had as counselors, paved the way for our careers as educators. The incredibly ‘positive’ atmosphere of helping to create successes for young people at CFE carried over into our combined 61+ years in the classroom.” Tom & Kate Marshall
“Summer of ’71. Wayne State got out really late and there were no summer jobs left. There was a tiny ad in the school newspaper. I applied and a couple of days later some guy names Alex Canja called me on the phone, asked me a few questions and hired me, sight unseen. Luckiest day of my life. Literally.” Merrill Falk
A Legacy of Love
When Alex finally retired, and Camp Flying Eagle had closed, and he and Tess had moved to sunny Florida where he wouldn’t have to shovel snow anymore, he began a new career. As Tess rose higher and higher in the ranks of AARP leadership, Alex became her “executive assistant” – making sure tiny Tess had a step-stool to stand on behind tall podiums when she gave speeches, chauffeuring her from event to event, and proudly wearing a button that said “Mr. Tess Canja.” They traveled the world together with Alex looking out for Tess every step of the way.
“No other couple ever danced so close,” said one observer.
He also became the unofficial leader of the “AARP Board Member Spouses.” While Tess and other board members were in meetings, Alex organized outings, book club gatherings, discussion groups and other ways for the spouses to connect.
And every summer he and Tess returned to Crooked Lake where they stayed close to Dick and Gloria across the lake and welcomed visits from former campers and counselors. He walked the shores of the lake, cleaning up brush as he went. He walked the woods and stayed in communion with the trees. And when he passed on, his dear friend, Frank Pflum – a builder who helped put up all of the buildings at CFE – brought over a bench which today sits on a hill overlooking Crooked Lake:
