Margaret Kremer McLaughlin's daughter Emily has been a Tacoma counselor here all summer, and this vicarious re-emergence into Frost Valley has set Margaret to fond remembering. Here is what she recently wrote to me:Ray my oldest brother was actually the first employee of Camp Wawayanda from the Kremer clan under Jim White in the early 60s. (Mom and Dad were late entrants into the Frost Valley employment pool). I think Ray met his wife Meg at Camp. All the Kremer siblings worked there as you know -- my son Nathan was also a counselor for a couple years in 1998, 1999.
I was hired the first year they had a girls camp kitchen with the Van Zandts as cooks. I was either 15 or 16 (1965-1966)... but the main criteria for employment was being at least 5 '10' as the men were not certain that girls could handle the heavy workload - particularly the pot duty. If there were pictures... we were quite a hefty crew.
Elsie Kimble was girls camp director when I began.. I became very attached to her. I tried to find her after I dropped Emily off this summer. I know she was a Professor at Mississippi State University. I was allowed to visit her during my junior year of high school while she was in graduate school at the University of Alabama for Romance languages. It was my very first plane ride and I was only allowed to go if I made it into the National Honor Society..
I continued to work every summer afterwards in a variety of roles. The next big "boy-girl" issue arose over "out tripping". The boys went on extended out-trips and canoe trips... and the girls staff had to push for equal opportunity for the girl campers. I recall hiking with girls wearing desert boots because there was no such thing as a girl's hiking boot available at the time. Desert boots had very flimsy soles. At some other time, when I have more time, I could muse a bit about the boy-girl development at the camp!
Carol English, Janet Winner, myself and I think John Paul Thomas (although I don't recall all the male counterparts) took the first co-ed cross-country trip in early 70s. [This was called "Western Adventures."] We flew stand-by with a passel of campers out of New York into Denver, rented a bus and traveled all over the place, and I think the thing cost about $400 per camper. I remember at the end of the trip the bus driver was in tears because he had never had a group behaved so well for four weeks. The bus got impounded the day we visited Disneyland as we had been on the road for too long... so we had to stay at the park for 14 hours. This was not a problem!
