At the 2001 reunion we celebrated the 100th year of Wawayanda camping, which began of course in 1901. There was a moment when we realized we had seven former Camp Wawayanda directors in the dining hall at the same time. There were a total of nine Wawayanda directors at the reunion, but neither Jim Ewen nor Mike Ketcham had yet arrived at that moment...and maybe ten if Steve Purkis was there, as I think he was, and if Steve had been a Wawayanda--as distinct from Hird--Director. Well we present seven gathered up front and led the 400 former staff attending the reunion in a surprisingly emotional rendition of "Happy Birthday" sung to Wawayanda itself. Emotional...because...perhaps because Wawayanda had always taken time to sing happy birthday to us and now we were returning the favor. Then of course there was the Hula Hop and then the "Order of the Oar." The gathering was given a choice of which director to toss into the air 100 times: Dave King, Rick Wormeli, or Al Filreis. King won the vote, I'm sure, but would have refused to be thrown up 100 times, lest he throw up his lunch on us, so the fiction was that I received the greatest applause and hence I became surely the person tossed into the air the greatest number of times at any single "Order of the Oar" affair. A hundred times is a lot, I can tell you now from firsthand experience, and, to be sure, the people tossing me were not holding back. I rose eight feet into the air...The directors were, from left to right: Dave King (director in the 1960s and here & there in the early 70s), Digger Shortt (also in 1960s), Rick Wormeli (directed in late 1980s), Al Filreis (director in the 1970s and 80s), Dave Allen ("the amazing Dave!"--1980s), Bobby Hettler (early to mid-1970s), and Eileen Barnes (1990s).
