Jamie Duff is now a camper in Outpost, and Ceri Duff is a Susky girl. They've been family campers (the final week of the summer) with dad and mom but this is their first time in resident camp. Dad is here too, for two weeks. As dad put it at the VC meeting the other night: "I'm surely up there in the Frost Valley record books: twenty years between the now and the last time I was on the staff." Yes, dad is Stuart Duff, whose re-connection to Frost Valley I've mentioned here at least once before. Stuart was here in '84 and '85 and again in '88. I hope to get some time with him and my recorder--have him tell his own Frost Valley story.
His wife will join him and the kids after session 4 is done, for another week of Family Camp. Meantime, now Stuart is the perfect end-of-summer uplift. He offers an all-village one- or two-period mini-Olympics called "Gumbo Games." It's gone really well so far. He's also teaching some soccer, it seems, and is helping out variously. I hope to recruit him to be a judge at a few Challenge Nights coming up.
The photos shows Stuart flanked by Fenn Putman, President of our Board, and Tom Holsapple, Operations Director.
Last night I told my story called "Sawmill, 1958" to Susky - late, under the stars, at their village campfire. Most of the girls were mesmerized, a few were (temporarily) scared, but not Ceri. She made some wonderfully skeptical semi-wisecrack at the end. I didn't see the face but heard the accent (English with a family-induced taint of Irish in there somewhere). I thought to myself: "Ah, it's a Duff!"
