Friday, August 22, 2008

patches

All summer, at the end of each session, every camper received a patch - modeled very closely on the old "W" patches we got in the 60s and early 70s. As I reported with some excitement before the summer, the directors here (led by Dan Weir, I think) worked hard to revive this tradition, creating a "W" patch for the campers of Wawayanda and an "H" patch for the Hird kids. As before, a number of each indicates the numbers of years the camper or staff member has been here. A star indicates 10 or more summers. They're smaller than the old ones, but otherwise look the same: same nice felt, some design.

Well this didn't really hit me until this morning, when departing staff also received their patches. And I myself was given one. It's only been about 33 years since I got my last one. That's a lot of time passing between the same simple but powerful symbolic gesture. As I got mine I was standing next to Lee Griffin, a counselor (and son of a friend). This was Lee's 9th year so he got his H-9. Separated (in FV years) by a mere 36 years, we chatted and realized we felt the same way about all this.