The photo shows Dave King and me leading "Deep & Wide" at the Labor Day 2006 reunion. Once again I long for such good moments achingly.This very afternoon I spent a little more than an hour talking with Dave by phone, and we recorded the conversation. Click on this link and you will be able to play an hour-long mp3 sound file. If you right-click on that link, you can save the file to your computer and/or mp3 player; if you left-click you can play the recording. If you want to stream it, you can click on the right-facing triangle in the circle next to the link.
And here is a 6-minute excerpt about the summer of 1958.
During this interview, I learned a few things I had never ever heard or known before. I had never asked anyone about the details of using the swimming hole (muddy and awful) that had been dug in the field across from the Castle for the summer of 1958 - where the campers took swimming lessons before Lake Cole was built in '59. I also didn't know or didn't remember that in the first years the area across the bridge (Pigeon and Biscuit Lodges, Reflection Pond, and the Castle) was off limits to everyone, staff included. I didn't know that the Castle wasn't called "the Castle" until Jim Whyte was the executive director in the early 60s. I hadn't heard the story of the camper who drowned on one of the canoe trips in the early years. I hadn't realized that the staff were still finishing the new cabins during staff training just days before the campers arrived in June of '58.
Many folks know about the plane that crashed on Doubletop in 1966. But did you know that in 1968, during a holdover weekend, a small plane crash-landed in the Castle field? During our discussion, Dave talked about that one. And since posting this initially, I've heard from Ken Nathanson about that incident. Ken must have been 11 or 12 at the time, and he happened to be staying in the Castle that weekend and saw the crash. Here's Ken: I actually have my father’s old movies of the recovery of the plane. There is good footage of Dave, Halbe, Paul, Joe Chandler, Bud, John Paul, me and Peter Tilles, etc. I actually saw the plane come down into the field as I was walking up the steps to the patio of the castle. I ran up to the tower to see if I could find it and sure enough the tail was sticking up out of a small ditch. It took a bit of convincing to have the castle staff call for help. This was the summer holdover in ’68.
Well, in the summer of 2008 it will have been 50 years since Dave King, at 20 years old, came to Wawayanda at Frost Valley as the VC of Lenape. A few years later Dave was the Program Director and then began a long era as Boys' Camp Director. During all my years as a camper, Dave was my camp director. Later, when I was made a young Program Director (at 19 years old!), Dave came back for a half-summer as Camp Director and suddenly I found myself in the position of working as a co-director alongside the legendary King. I had been one of his kids, and now I was a colleague. Yikes. During the first summer or two working together as directors (we were Mutt & Jeff in height, that's for sure), he taught me a tremendous amount and we worked closely together for several years before he left Frost Valley to do full-year work as a superintendent of the Baltimore public schools. Between us as directors, we spanned 1963 to 1985 (to be sure, with others as well: Mike Ketcham, Bob Hettler, Jim Ewen and a few others) and more generally our involvement covers the whole 50 years to the present.For a few years in the late 60s and 70s, Dave was a member of Frost Valley's Board of Trustees. But because he was in Baltimore, and the meetings were held on weeknights in Montclair, Dave could not attend often and he felt it necessary to resign his seat.
You can hear in this interview my repeated invitation to Dave to come visit us for a few days during the summer of '08. If he and Shirley do make the visit, we will be sure to sing Dave as well as Frost Valley a joyful rendition of "Happy Birthday" in honor of our 50th.
