Saturday, September 8, 2007

1997

Dan Goldman (middle) and Rick Mckay (at right) and Chris Giampapa (left) at the 2001 centennial reunion.

Here's a selection from the 1997 staff list:

Catherine Baker - VC, Sacky
Amy Barkley - barn staff
Matt Buczek - counselor
Brian Butler - counselor
Sarah Chapman - JC
Heather Constant - babysitter
Jeff Daly - counselor
Rich Eddings - Pac counselor
Carly Einstein - JC
Catharine Giegengack - counselor
Dan Goldman - counselor
Heather Graf - CIT Coordinator
Dave Haight - Wawayanda Director
Nicholas Ippolito - horsebarn instructor
Khalid Jenkins - counselor
Katie Kelly - Assistant Director
Steve Ketcham - counselor
Mike Lee - assistant program director
Rick McKay - counselor
Todd Miller - "unit leader of Sequoia"
Nicole Parisi-Smith - counselor
Carol Paterson - waterfront director
Carrie Petrick - AC
Moira Poe - AC
Steve Purkis - Hird Director
Shawn Schaefer - counselor
Beth Schwartzapfel - AC
Maria Shapiro - VC Iscusfa
Vyaacheslav Tokar - counselor (from Ukraine)
Tara Wigand - VC Windsong

Is it possible that Carrie Petrick is related to Bill Petrick who had been a VC back in the early 80s?

Mike Lee stayed on at the valley for years - working all four seasons for some time before moving on.

Am I right that Carol Paterson later became a director - perhaps Program Director?

Moira ("Mo") Poe, of Brooklyn (once and now again), rose to Assistant Camp Director in '05. In '06 she was supposed to take a summer "off" (doing some research projects at camp) but then got pulled back into the fray and spent the second half of that busy summer again as a director, plugging holes, using her vast talents.

Nicholas must be the older brother of Zach, who came of age later - doing a summer in '06 as CIT Coordinator. Zach engineered his Olympic staff dream team (for China, I believe) and then promptly lost his voice within 10 minutes of the start of the program. (Here's an exhausted CIT Coordinator Zach along with Chris Cariello.)

I had met Beth Schwartzapfel maybe 5 years earlier when she was a camper. I could see immediately how bright she was (and also how committed she was to FV). I believe she came up to me and said, "I hear that you can teach me some of the old songs." And so we sang and talked for a while. Later she earned a degree in writing and spent several years as a journalist (and perhaps a journalist-activist). Beth and I are of entirely different real-world and FV generations, but I have a feeling that if we'd worked together, she in my era or I in hers, we would have seen eye to eye and been very close.