the Totem Pole in the early 1960s

 

Ann Hamilton Duprey has made this photo available to us. She writes: "This was an even earlier totem pole. I think this photo was taken of me and my brothers(the Hamiltons) at Family Camp in 1962 or 1963."

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Totem Village having fun!

A cabin of boys in Totem Village, summer of 1962. We don't know which cabin (it would have been 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5) and we can't identify any of the boys. If you can help, please email me at afilreis [at] gmail.com. Jim Wilkes thinks that the village chief of Totem that year was Mike DeVita. Dave King believes that Mike was the counselor of this cabin (and VC of the village). Dave was the Program Director in '62. When Wawayanda moved to Frost Valley in 1958, Mike DeVita was the VC of Forest that first summer.

Michael Pitcher remembers Wawayanda in the early 60s

Memories of Camp in the USA

I’m the little boy from Canada in Homer McLemore’s Summer of ’63 Totem group. I follow Al Filreis's blog closely these days because it reconnects me with very fond memories of a very special time.

I lived in the middle north of the province of Quebec in the early 60’s, a town then called Chibougamau….I could spell it long before the nuns at the town’s French School taught me how to read write and such. My Dad and his close friends were young men in a frontier mining town, full of family commitment and small town spirit. They loved to fish and their stories left you rolling on the floor…..sunken canoes, lost paddles, fish that jumped back out of their boats and such. They met Jim Wilkes and the Trailblazers in the summer of ’62 I think. They were awesome…they had this 3-ton Dark Blue Ford Stake truck and trailer full of 8 shiny aluminum canoes….they were like a busload of big brothers and they were full of great adventure…..that summer flew by. We waved goodbye to them in late summer….to the truck and guys that is. I remember they left the trailer full of canoes…..man I was proud of it. And they were from “way down south”. I didn’t know that Canada and the US were really separate countries, I remember feeling more like they were great folks from another part of the same country and we all loved adventure, the outdoors and having a good time. This was the early sixties and we lived outside of town on a small lake at the base of a big hill on top of which was located a brand new Dew Line Radar Station and its Observatory like Radar Dish Building….I had no idea what the Cold War was….I did listen to John Glenn on the radio as he orbited the earth and often saw the multiple contrails of the B-52’s going north “on manoeveurs”. I felt a part of the same world these Trailblazers lived in.

The next summer came all too slow but boy when they rolled back into town I was thrilled….we hung out by the campfire each night they were there and when they went off into the woods on their “trailblazing” trip I waited eagerly for their return…course I missed my dad too.

Then something magical happened…..I got to leave with them when the first group went “home” . Somehow I remember sitting in a school bus learning to sing, “If I had a hammer…” “Runnin through a swamp….” ( it had sound effects), and most of all “This Land is Your Land”……man it’s great to listen to Woody Guthrie singing this on “YouTube” these days….I remember staying at the bus drivers house one night in Liberty, N.Y. and I remember a lot of neat things about my first summer at camp. I’ve got the original picture that Homer McLemore sent to my mother in 2003. It’s the one in Al Filreis’ blog with Homer leading Totem on a hike…likely to the Neversink River or some other really great place. I’m the little guy second in line behind Homer. By the way I also remember the wild “ghost stories” the cabin leaders used to tell us around the campfires in the “sleepy hollows” around Wawayanda.

I got to go to “W” two summers in a row ( I got two “W” patches!) and the second time got to stay in the Castle when I was picked up at the end of the summer. I think it was 1963. That October we moved out of the north and into the Ottawa, Canada’s Capital City and way south of a land I’d lived in for 11 years… I was in public school in November 1963 and I remember President Kennedy.

I remember the morning flag raising at Camp Wawayanda, pledging allegiance to the Flag of the USA and signing the Star Spangled Banner. Most especially I am deeply touched and very grateful for the incredible experiences I enjoyed those summers in the Catskills with other kids who got together to have fun, shoot arrows, eat Fudgsicles from the canteen, watch 50’s sci-fi movies in the “barn” [the “Rec Hall” – now Margetts], be an Olympian from Siam….etc, etc.

Today I live on the West Coast. Actually “off” the West Coast on Vancouver Island. My wife, Bernadette and I own a busy bakery in the Comox Valley…just north of the middle of the island; 2,445 (Google) miles across North America from Frost Valley. We’ve moved in and out of corporate careers, travelled half-way round the world to work as short term missionaries in England, Turkey and Uzbekistan and returned home to live in our busy valley.

I love the Seattle Mariners, The Montreal Canadiens and pretty much everything in between about both countries.

I’ve had a tremendous number of great experiences these past 56 years. Who I am and what I’ve done has a lot to do with the lessons learned when I got to go to camp. I’m sure anyone reading this has similar tales to tell….I know I’ve enjoyed reading the many that are on Al’s Blog . New or old the tales tell the timeless truth…our great adventures start early in life and leave the most meaningful lessons.

I still feel a small part of a big family full of great spirit.

In a few words with much meaning …..thank-you.

Michael Pitcher
The little boy from Canada. 1963

the girls' camp staffer who led songs "on the girls' side"

Above is a portion of the photo of the 1962 boys' camp staff. The handsome young guy in the middle on the bottom row is a Junior Counselor by the name of Henry A. Cox, Jr., known as "Bud."

If you click here you'll see photos of the entire 1962 summer staff, along with the names of just about everyone in the pictures.

The other night a member of the girls' camp staff that summer--Kathy Schonmeyer--found this stuff on the web, and then wrote to me. Here's part of what Kathy (who now goes by "Kate") wrote:

I just logged into your Frost Valley blog, went to the "alumni photos" page and scrolled down, and what to my wondering eyes did appear, but a link to the 1962 Wawayanda staff. I clicked on the link to the picture and there I was, as I knew I would be. I'm sitting next to Penny Hanna, and the name should be Kathy Schonmeyer. Jumping up one row, Jane Doncey should be Jane Donley.

I have some pictures from that year and the next few. I worked at Wawayanda for four summers, '62 - '65. I was one of the Ohio group. I was a counselor for two years, then waterfront director, then program director, and then I had to get a serious job that paid real money. The fact is, I'd still be happily coming back every summer if I could....

1965 was my final year. Carol DeVita was Girls' Camp Director that year. I just read about Gerry Lester's passing. She was good people.

I also read about Dave King. I usually led the songs on the girls' camp side during my tenure, all the raucous songs from Broadway Y in Cleveland, some of which I'm sure were retired many years ago, like "Titanic." "Hey Look Us Over" was one of the songs that came from Broadway Y, my incubator.

Kate will be happy to know that the campers and staff of girls' camp (Camp Hird) sang "Hey Look Us Over" at least until the early 1980s and that "Titanic" was sung through the late 80s and maybe even into the early 90s.

Hey, look us over, lend us an ear
We are from Y camp, you have heard us cheer
Never a letdown, never a frown,
Whenever we get together life is just a merry-go-round,

For there are two weeks of swimming, two weeks of fun,
We're all in clover and always on the run,
So whenever you're feeling down and out
Remember us and shout
Wawayanda is for you.

The Wawayanda version of the song was imported through the staff women who came to Frost Valley from the Cleveland Y. Dorothy Stenger, Girls' Director of the Broadway Y in Cleveland, wrote the words to the Cleveland version of the song.

1962-63 guy finds us

Here's a page of the staff list for the summer of 1963. The last name on the page is Richard Matthes. Dick had been a member of the kitchen staff in '62, then counselor (Forest, cabin 6) in '63, and then, he remembers, he had to leave Frost Valley in order to make some real money in subsequent summers. "I have bored my children with my Tales of Wawayanda over the years," he says. Yesterday he found this blog and made his daughter sit with him and "suffer through a narration of the pictures" on the site. We're glad to be back in touch with you, Dick!

Rudy, come & gone

Before computers, the making of the cabin lists before each new two-week session was a major project - complex and almost always done late at night when directors should have been out and around checking on things, dealing with last-minute problems, getting some sleep before the big exchange day/holdover weekend.

I can still remember all the all-nighters I pulled doing this. Usually the memory is about the friends who helped me. Read off the names, check the birthdays, make sure campers who requested each other are together, check to be sure we haven't created a cabin full of lifers next to one full of rookies....and what are the possible bad combos of camper-counselor personalities?

Here you see a photo taken of two staff people assembling the cabin lists (either them or the bus lists - the latter just as crucial for different reasons but less complex an activity) in 1962. The two are Bill Starmer and Rudy Gilbert.

Can you tell where they are working? It's inside the Lake House. This is the small house across the camp road from the boathouse and across the county road from where the old horsebarn used to be. Later Everett Lake lived there, and still later Leslie Black and Doug Kerr.

Rudy Gilbert was a counselor. He went on one of the Canadian trips with Jim Wilkes. Rudy was a student of civil engineering from New Orleans, attending Mississippi State College (which was at the time a feeder school to Wawayanda). This was Rudy's one summer at Frost Valley.

Shortly after that summer (1962) Rudy was murdered on the streets of New Orleans. Lots and lots of fine young people have passed through FV in the summers before and since, and probably few of us remember Rudy Gilbert there that one summer. So why not use this 21st-century-fangled mode (this blog) as a means by which to honor such a person, and (because we still do the same things Rudy did then) to remember him even we don't ourselves remember him?

Bill Starmer, upon seeing this picture after all these years, writes: "You have no idea how often I think about Rudy. We became really close in just a short time. Wonderful future ahead of him. So sad his life had to end so suddenly. One of the few people from those days that still floats through my memory."

So here's to Rudy! And here's to such friendships! Cherish them while you have 'em.

what we say we will do

Thanks to Bud Cox, who has kept many of the old camp newsletters. Here's an item from the Wawayanda Wasp issue of 1962, a note in anticipation of a great summer for '63:

What we say we will do – we will do, is not just a slogan at Wawayanda. All of us are victims of exaggerated advertising in the purchase of commodities, and kids are more often the most disappointed when something does not live up to what we expected.

Looking forward to going to camp is almost as much fun as being there. In the process of dreaming, great expectations develop. It is the earnest desire of each member of the staff to meet these expectations and to give that boy or girl all he or she hoped for.

With a full camp and a long waiting list, we do not need to “advertise the camp” with exaggerated promotional materials. We want you as parents to find the experience your son or daughter will have, better then you expected. We the staff have a tradition of 63 years of operation to live up to, and indeed each of us intend to make 1963 the best ever.

our epic goes back to Homer

Homer McLemore worked at Wawayanda from 1961 through 1963 and has visited only twice since that time. But he's been following this blog and it has conjured up clear memories. "Wawayanda with its staff and several of its campers are experiences that I cannot seem to forget - they are with me always with great fondness. I know that the camp physical facilities and programs have significantly changed; however, it is 'yesterday' that I remember."

He remembers a boy from Canada who was probably under minimum camp age. He was with Homer in Totem. Maybe he was permitted to be at camp at too young an age because his father was our contact in the Canadian wilderness (for our canoe trips there). One chilly rainy night at the top of Slide Mountain, this little boy managed to get a fire started when no one else, including Homer, could seem to do it.

He remembers an 11-year-old boy perhaps named Furman - from Alabama. He remembers him because he knew or learned that due to segretation no camp in the South would offer this boy the camp experience he got at Wawayanda.

He remembers the 1962 campers of cabin 11 who won a talent contest by performing a skit based on the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

Baltimoreans galore

Earlier I mentioned the plethora of Marylanders on the camp staff roster during Wawayanda's first years at Frost Valley. I'm looking now at the 1962 staff list and here are the Baltimore-area people: Dave and Shirley King, Carole Quensen, Dick Somers, Mike DeVita, Digger Shortt, Noel Acton (lived in Kingsville MD but attended college at UVa), Lou Gaston, John Matukaitis, Bob Middaugh (lived in Towson), Linda Shortt (Digger's sister), Frank Neumann (kitchen staff), Sandy DeVita (junior counselor). The second greatest concentration was probably the Mississippi folks and the third was Westfield, NJ. 1962 was the last time the staff lists included college affiliations. in '62 the Baltimore contingent added counselors Richard Holmes and Frank Neumann and Carl Sandberg (spelled differently from the poet).

Above: Digger Shortt, at right, with John Ketcham - at the 2001 Wawayanda centennial reunion.

Bill Sonsin goes way back

Bill Sonsin, who was a camper at the old Johnsonburg, NJ Wawayanda in '56 and '57 and then spent the summers of '58 and '59 at FV as a camper and '61 and '62 as a staff member, recently reconnected to FV through our web site. Bill lived in Minneapolis for many years where he worked as a personal financial advisor. Now retired, he lives in Prescott, Arizona where he does volunteer work, writes a weekly newspaper column on small business, and hikes with a local group, though he admits that his idea of roughing it these days is staying at the Motel 6 instead of the Holiday Inn. Bill still remembers fellow Westfield (NJ) 'ers Bud Cox and Mike Ketcham as well as Dave King, Mike DeVita, Digger Shortt, and Jim Wilkes. (I have been in touch with Jim Wilkes recently. Dave and Shirley King will be visiting Frost Valley this coming weekend. Mike Ketcham directs a beautiful camp on the Sound near Tacoma. And Bud Cox, of course, is still here after all these years.

The image above is the 1962 Boys' Camp staff photo: standing: Dave Tomb, Bill Watts, Alan Cosner, Jim Vlk, Lew Gaston, Noel Acton, John Matukitis, Rick Sanborn, Bill Ford, Tom Squires; 2nd row: Homer McLemore, Joe Adcock, Phil Cornelius, Bob Eilenberger, SAm Townsend, Jesse Booth, Steve Irwin, Rich Real, Bill Starmer; seated: Bill Stout, Bob Kimball, Digger Shortt, Jim Farned, Dave King, Al Parsons, Bruce Bohrer, Mike DeVita, Ralph Holt, Len Cummings; 4th row: Bill Horne, Steve Calbert, Bud Cox, Jack Leitch, Bill Sonsin, Andy Angevine. For more (including a photo of the 1962 Girls' Camp staff, click here.