1974: 2 weeks in Tacoma Village (VC was Valerie Pluto, JC Nancy Brady)
1975: 2 weeks in Seneca Village [an one-time extension of Cherokee
Village, which was already an extension of Tacoma]
1976: CIT (directors were Leslie Helms and Norm Gurfinkel)
1977: FCC
1978: JC in Susky
1979: counselor in Pocahontas Village (Kathryn O'Keefe VC)
1980: counselor
(At some point later she and Nate [last name?] led a Lake Champlain trip.)
She and her husband and three kids have been going to Family Camp for 5 years. She first came to Frost Valley originally with Linda Kaiser (sister of the aforementioned June). "I of course," she writes, "have many memories of you, 'Goin' on a Lion Hunt', 'Dead Skunk', Closing Campfires in the old Boys Dining Hall, et cetra."
Philla was featured in a Newark Star Ledger article last Thursday. Here's the whole article:
Women triumph in race no matter her age or speed
Thursday, September 13, 2007
People are sometimes surprised when they meet Philla Barkhorn. The Chatham mother of three is founder of The Tri Women, an informal group of mostly Morris County ladies who -- in their spare time -- train for triathlons. In two years, she's recruited 275 women to her group, which provides free training for the swimming-biking-running/walking events.
So when people first make contact they figure they're going to meet some elite athlete, some hard-bodied fitness nut. And that, Barkhorn says frankly, is something she is not.
"I'm in shape enough, but I'm not buff," she says. "I'm not at my perfect weight. I'm very healthy -- that's the secret. You don't have to look like Serena Williams to do this."
It's about how it makes you feel, she said. Confident. Energetic. Triumphant. She remembers having that feeling for the first time in 2005, when a friend recruited her to the Danskin Triathlon. The event -- being held this weekend at Sandy Hook -- consists of a half-mile swim, an 11-mile bike ride and a 3.1 mile run or walk and benefits the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. After that first year, Barkhorn wanted to get more women involved. So she called a meeting at the local Y and some 60 women showed up. "We had this tiny little conference room," she remembered. "They were out in the hallway!"
Through connections like Bob Koppenol, the owner of Starting Line Sports in Madison, she found people willing to give them free training.Ironically enough, as Barkhorn was putting all this together, she was diagnosed with breast cancer herself. She had a mastectomy with reconstruction, she said. "We very quickly knew that I was going to be fine."
This year, when Barkhorn participates in the Danskin Triathlon, she is going to be running with other "survivors" of breast cancer. There are a handful of them in The Tri Women, she said, though they've never focused on that so she doesn't know how many exactly.
Irene Fisher of Harding is one of them, though she says she's not so much a "survivor" as "surviving."
Fisher is a psychologist who had a bilateral mastectomy about four years ago. "I'm surviving, I'm fine, I'm robust, I'm healthy, I'm happy," she said. She joined The Tri Women after seeing a sign on a bulletin board at the Madison Y. She entered the Danskin event, and started training.
She's 62, she said, "well past the average age of who is doing this." But, she added, "There was something appealing about it. I want to be with a group of women." She's slow, she says, and she's OK with that. "I'm not competitive, I'm not fast, I will never be fast, I don't care to be fast," she said.
And no one has given her a hard time about that. Quite the opposite. "People have been kind and generous," she said. "It's been the best summer of my life."
Anyone interested in joining Tri Women can e-mail Barkhorn at pbarkhorn [at] patmedia [dot] net.
