ping pong in the old dining hall, 1974

 

Bud Cox and Bill Clarke enjoying some free time during pre-camp.1974 Old Boys' Dining Hall. Photo by Doug Tompkins late May or early June.

Cherokee

Below is a photo of Cherokee Village in 1975 or '74. When the number of girls enrolled as campers boomed in the early 1970s, Halbe Brown asked the seasonal director team how they could accommodate the increased numbers. The response was to create a new village for the oldest girls. Tacoma had been the oldest village since the beginning of girls' camp. Now "Cherokee" would be the oldest. But where to house them? The boys CITs were now in Hayden, since its renovation in 1968 or '69; the girls CITs were traditionally in Turrell Lodge. Pigeon Lodge was used for staff housing upstairs and the Staff Lounge downstairs. That left Biscuit Lodge, so the oldest girls moved in there. The then-new Tokyo YMCA partnership in a few years (early 1980s) moved into Pigeon and Biscuit, so eventually the oldest girls village had to move again. I created "Windsong" village in 1983 (and two years later, "Quinnipiac" in 1985 in Hird Lodge). "Windsong" moved into Turrell and was there for some years until Kresge was built in the '90s. In between "Cherokee" and the making of "Windsong" there were a few summers of "Sunburst" village, living in odd spots around camp; one summer "Sunburst" even lived in a few platform tents set up at the edge of the woods behind the Ad Office! They used the Ad office bathroom for showering!

But Cherokee was not a success. The camps were still divided by boys and girls. The oldest girls couldn't be expected to walk all the way across campus for meals in the girls' dining hall (now Geyer Hall). And there wasn't room there for more than the four original villages: Pokey, Susky, Sacky and Tacoma. So Cherokee ate in the boys' dining hall, in the back room ("Hemlock Lounge"). It means, let's just say, that they received a great deal of attention from the boys in the oldest villages, creating some rivalries with Tacoma and even Sacky. In Hemlock Lounge they ate with the program staff and administrative staff, and that wasn't a good fit either. Still, it was a few years of interesting experiment, and I'm sure that those who came through Cherokee on their way to CIT remember the experience fondly.

hanging out

From left to right: Frank Rutan, Ed Wong, Al Filreis, and Liz White. Check out my steel-colored aviator frames and my hush puppies. I wore those puppies for days on end. We're hanging out in front of Hayden Lodge here. I believe Frank and Liz were co-FCC Directors that summer (that would be the equivalent of today's CIT program - with its 8-day hiking trip. FCC = Future Camp Counselor. The year was 1976.

Ed Wong was a teacher in Ohio, friend of Ken and Sue Barton. Hilarious guy. He started off as a counselor in Forest and then I think led some bike trips.

it's never too late to express thanks

A few days ago Kim O'Connell and a friend climbed up part of Slide Mountain, and this experience put Kim in mind of her days at Frost Valley, from 1970 through 1974. She was known then as Kim Aronowitz. (The image is reproduced from a photograph in the 1972 yearbook of Kim and the other CITs that summer. Kim is at the back right, behind Starr Hedrick who was the CIT Director.) After coming down from Slide, Kim went home and starting looking for traces of Frost Valley on the web...and found this blog. Kim now tells a moving story about reuniting with her counselors through the last weeks and days of their father. Here is that story:

As a social worker for Compassionate Care Hospice I have covered many territories in New Jersey. Currently I see patients in Bergen County but two years ago I was covering the Morris, Warren and Sussex areas. I was in our Parsipanny office one day and happened to glance up at our patient board. The board lists patients and their respective nurses. I saw a name that I knew from many years ago. It was Edward Ambry a longtime member of the Frost Valley Board of Trustees. But more importantly he was the father of my two camp counselors the first year I was at Wawayanda. Meg and Susan Ambry along with Anne Marie Kremer were the counselors for the Tent Village (or dirt village as we were lovingly called). Although I was not assigned to the nurse for Ed, I asked if I could be the Social Worker for he and his wife Marge. I spoke by phone to Karen Ambry, the eldest of the Ambry girls, and asked her to tell Susan that I would be following Ed on hospice and to remind her that I had be a camper of hers. I didn't think she'd remember me but to my surprise she did. I went to the Ambry home in Denville and met Marge and Ed. Ed was diagnosed with Alzheimers and Parkinson's disease and was quite ill. Marge stated that he had begun to decline after the death of his daughter Meg in 2000. I remembered Meg as a beautiful and almost ethereal presence. She was a gentle, brilliant soul. I remained the social worker and developed a relationship with Ed and Marge. As a matter of fact we were so taken with each other that Ed asked me to marry him several times. I advised him that he was already married but it not seem to phase him. Ed became more ill and during his illness I was able to meet with Susan again after 36 years. During that time I had the opportunity to tell Sue what it meant to have her as a counselor and a mentor. I was 12 years old and badly in need of nurturing and she provided that and more. Susan had no idea how she affected me and I was able to tell her. I could not have conceived of a time when I would ever have seen her again. Ed finally succumbed and his family was grieved and uplifted by his many accomplishments. I in turn was able to repay a kindness. Unfortunately I couldn't tell Meg Ambry how I was affected by her. Maybe someday I can tell Anne Marie Kremer as well.

heaven is Forstmann's apples and music

Ah those old old apple trees (are they 100 years old by now? possibly?). I have loved an Indian Summer weekend in late September or early October, even later, temps soaring to 60, sun on my neck, walking on a Sunday (after the conference groups have left) from apple tree to apple tree, picking just the right one - eating it on the spot. Oh, but they are sour! Best to make an apple pie after adding loads of sugar to the chopped apples. Or get them into the cider press. But if you dare, eat one right there, in the sun, on the Sunday. Here at right is Sue Moriarity, reaching for the perfect apple on just such a Sunday afternoon in the fall of 1974. We'd munch away, sitting in the Big Tree Field or on the porch of "Old John's" house (currently where the Alexanders live, down the hill along High Falls Brook), hoping Sue would get out her guitar and play a Joni Mitchell song she'd just perfected, or Bonnie Raitt's version of Randy Newman's "Guilty." Heaven: Forstmann's apples and music and nothin' else to do. Hotcha!

former camper makes horror cult film from FV campfire stories

Martin Kunert (a recent photo is at left) was a camper in Totem (in '73), Forest ('74), Outpost ('75), Lenape ('76), Hemlock ('77), Sequoia ('78) - and then was a CIT ('79) and then FCC ('80), and loved hearing scary stories around the campfire. His specialty emerged during Challenge Night. He would always do his dog-bark impersonation...and it won every time. And here Martin--who found this blog late last night, surfing the web--picks up the story:

I remember your telling of the toboggan run story, which I heard several times.

Speaking of hearing stories in FV, you may get a kick out of this.... I heard so many scary stories around the camp fire while at Forest Valley, that ten years ago I made a film called... surprise, surprise... CAMPFIRE TALES. It's become a sort of horror cult film. Take a gander here:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115813/

Every single one of the stories in that film I heard in Forest Valley.

Later, I created a reality show for MTV called FEAR, where six contestants take cameras into haunted places and scare the hell out of themselves. I'm sure the seed of that was planted in my head during my time in FV too. Funny how life works.

I've never seen Campfire Tales and have just ordered my copy through Netflix. My kids and I will build a virtual campfire here in Philadelphia a few nights from now and have a watch. A Netflix reviewer (a viewer) wrote: "These stories are the the stories of childhood camping trips and sleep overs when you were able to make yourself scared over stories simply for te fun of being scared. This movie brought back that being frightened for fun feeling. You will know how the stories end long befor the climax, but it's still worth watching if you can approach it with that nostalgic feeling of childhood fright and fun."

More recently Martin has made a film called Voices of Iraq. Here is an interview with Martin and his co-producer about that film.

they made things work

They were probably already laughing over Carl Hess' rare display of his pale legs (he rarely wore shorts on camp property) when I took this shot. Carl said something satirical about me, and brushed his brush-cut back with one hand (then that little rub of the short hairs down toward the neck) while lifting his cap with the other.

Carl's audience that late-summer late afternoon in the mid-70s ('74 or '75) was, from left to right sitting on the Olympic Circle: Carl's beloved, dependable, can-do wife and life/work-partner Marie Hess, the pseudo-grumpy and hilariously ascerbic long-time summer maintenance guy Carl Van Zandt, Ron House, walrus-mustached Lou Senor, and the immortally ingenious Chuck White.

All four of the men sitting worked for Carl in the maintenance department (although Ron House was a summer-only helper that year; he was a year-round environmental ed coordinator). Shortly after this, Chuck and Carl split the facilities responsibilities into two large parts: Carl leading maintenance and repairs, Chuck leading construction (we called it "development").

Fans of FV's storied vehicular history will recall the olive-green Chevy Suburban van in the background here. This one didn't last long. There was another green Suburban (no "wood" paneling on that one) that was fine for a while but then our camp driver Charlie Speck drove it into an old Forstmann-era concrete wading pool behind Biscuit Lodge. That's a story I'll tell another time, if and when I find a photo of Charlie Speck and/or of that ill-fated van.

We (the young camp staff drivers) were very hard on the vehicles, as Carl never ceased reminding me. Indeed, the wisecrack he'd just made at me when I took this shot might well have been about something I'd done (again) to one of the camp trucks.

can't help but wonder where I'm bound

April 1974: Bud lured a bunch of us on a planned 5-day backpacking trip up and across the mountains (Table, Peekamoose, etc.) "behind" or to the south of Slide--in other words, up the "back way" (via the East Branch Neversink Road at Tison's) to Slide, which we usually approach from the county road as it winds across the north edge of the Catskills' tallest peak. On the first day--April 19th, I think--temps were in the 60s. We took sweaters and jackets but that was all in the way of warm things. This photo was taken that first night out. But then we got hit by 17" of ice and snow. Some of us went a little bonkers and dragged the tents through the ice shards, ripping the tarps. We were hard pressed just to make a fire. Several of us walked back toward what is now Frost Valley's farm - to the home of Mr. and Mrs. Ertz (who lived in what is now our farmhouse). We called Chuck White (of course) and Chuck, wearing his usually bemused smile (it said something like: you people don't have a clue), came and got us in a truck, and back we went to camp. Was this the only time in his long career outdoors that Bud Cox was forced to abandon a planned trip? He and I still talk about this journey, smiling and rolling our eyes.

Don't you love Bud's Bob Dylan sunglasses? I always did. And I can hear him singing, as we hiked, "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...." Wish it were true.

Diana Siderides, horsebarn in '74

Diana Siderides (whose home base was Cherry Hill, NJ, near Philadelphia) was our "Riding Director" at the horsebarn in 1974. The previous year she had ridden with two friends 3,000 miles from Morrisville, New York, to Ventura, California on horses named Okie and Collar Bars "and a pinto mare." This remarkable feat can be confirmed here. I believe '74 was Diana's only summer at Frost Valley. Later she was the founder of Flight to Freedom, Rehabilitation Resource for Raptors and has written several books about her work with owls and hawks. She created this project in 1985, while she was recovering from an accident that severely injured her right hand and arm. Since then, she has worked hard to develop a sanctuary for injured and orphaned birds of prey, and provide assistance so that they may be reintroduced to the wild. For a biographical profile, go here.

Melanie Mackin, 1958-2005

The other day I was thinking about Melanie Mackin, who was a CIT in '73, an LIT in '74 and a terrific JC in '75. Melanie from Short Hills, NJ - an energetic joyful young person I recall from those summers. I looked in our listserv and realized that we'd lost touch with her. Then I googled her and found, sadly, that she passed away in 2005. In 2002 she and two other partners had founded a law firm in Ohio that concentrated on workers' compensation and labor relations. Here is an obituary:

Melanie Mackin Stump, age 47, of Oakwood, Ohio, formerly of Montclair and Short Hills NJ, passed away Saturday, Oct. 15, 2005 at the Hospice Care Center, Dayton, Ohio. Melanie was born on April 25, 1958 in Newark, New Jersey. She was preceded in death by her mother Alma (Partyka) Mackin. She is survived by her husband of 18 years, Randall; her son Ronald Patrick Stump; her father Thomas Mackin of Bedminster NJ; her sister, Tara Hiby and her husband Eric of Houston TX; her niece Allison Hiby; her father-in-law and mother-in-law Maury and Patricia Himmelberg of Kettering OH; two sister-in-laws Leigh Ann Turner of Bellbrook OH and Susan Holt and her husband Tim and their children Justin & Kristin of Tampa FL. , She was a 1980 graduate of Smith College in Northampton MA, and a 1984 graduate of the University of Dayton School of Law and was admitted to the Ohio Bar in the fall of 1984. She started her career as a law clerk for Judge James A. Brogan, then worked at Smith and Schnacke for several years, later with Chernesky, Heyman & Kress, and then with Thompson Hine. In 2002 she was a founding partner in the firm of Scheuer, Mackin & Breslin, with offices in Dayton, Cincinnati & Cleveland. She was board certified in the specialty area of Workers Compensation Law. Memorial contributions may be made to Hospice of Dayton, 324 Wilmington Ave., Dayton OH 45420.

If Melanie's FV friends want to set up a campership in Melanie's memory (financial aid grant for a camper to attend for 2 weeks whose family cannot otherwise afford it), contact me and I can help set it up.

you try wearing one of those mesh synthetic staff shirts

Ah, those white mesh synthetic staff shirts...summer of '74, heyday of mesh and non-cotton. Man, did we sweat in those! But we looked good, or thought we did. I think all the guys wore leather chokers that summer. It's late June, 1974, the Sunday of check-in, first camping session of the summer, and why are these people just sitting and standing around? I can assure you that I was working on one of the luggage trucks--probably snapping this shot from "the White Rat" passing by. From left to right they are: Maurice Penn (Outpost counselor and talented leader of dining hall cheers and songs including a great rendition of "Drift Away"--"gimme that beat boys and free my soul"), Nancy Brady (then a CIT, I think), Keith Brankner (Sequoia counselor--in window), Valerie Bellefatto, Tammy Thompson, Mark Staimer (Forest counselor) - sitting in front of a recently renovated Hayden Lodge (formerly the crafts shop).