1995

Marc Hanna has made a wonderful video montage consisting of many many black-and-white photos he himself shot throughout the summer of 1995. It's on Facebook and I'm not certain those without a Facebook account can view it, but give it a try and see.

Here are some of the people who appear in the video: Adrian Gamarello, Al Filreis, Alexander Papouchis, Alexander Shalom, Alexander Warnow, Angelica Velazquez, Anne Valerio Goff, Bob Eddings, Brian Butler, Carly Einstein, Chloe Annetts, Coll Wenke, Damion Frye, Diane Sacker, Elisabeth Gordon, Elizabeth McNeil Runte, Eric Blum, Heather Constant-Eddings, Heather S Graf Noon, Janine DelGiorno, Jeff Daly, Jennifer Ostrow, Joe Elliott, Josh Gordon, Joshua Tucker, Julie Cusumano, Kate Landis, Laura Viggiano, Leah Rickman, Malik Jenkins, Mikia Eatman, Noah O'Connor, Ryan Annetts, Sara Sara Bo Bara, Theresa M. Lane.

nobody messes with Ta-(uh)-coma

In today's mail arrived** not just the full staff list for summer 1995, but also (a rarer document in every year) the list of the village staffs. (As many or most reading this blog know, our staff lists gave names, addresses, and generally described positions. But village and other assignments were printed separately and were never part of the official record.)

Here's the Tacoma staff that summer:

Katie Kelly (VC)
Jessie Bleichman C
Georgia Chown C
Jill Clark C
Meghan Conley C
Kristen LiVolsi C
Victoria Secora C
Care Coffina (Associate Counselor or "AC"--see below)
Diane Sacker AC
Marta Esquilin AC
Deb Shoenemann AC
Elly Weisenberg AC

Katie Kelly's involvement has been deep and a few years ago she was our full-time Alumni Coordinator. Diane Sacker stayed around quite a while after her AC summer in Tacoma, and has been very active on the alumni committee. Deb Schoeneman is someone I've known since she was a little kid, as she's the daughter of Morris and Sandy; Morris was for many years one of the pediatric nephrologists who spent at least two weeks at camp. Morris and Sandy became avid FV'ers, as did their daugthers, and good friends of the Whites. "Georgia was from England," D'Arcy Oaks says, "funny crazy Brit."

"Cara Coffina was awesome," remembers Karin Turer, "--I think she and Katie Kelley shared a birthday. But Cara's was 7/7/77, which made everyone envious. I'm sure she had a great party this year!"

"Jill was serious, dedicated," D'Arcy Oaks continues, "and probably the most devoted to wellness out of TacoLen (and Katie and I called the 2 villages that summer). Meghan was a counselor's counselor, who used her intellect at camp to persuade young women to do things they didn't want to (like get in the water). Vicky was one of my roommates in college, she also traveled to West Africa with me in the summer of '93."

As for Kristen LiVolsi: if she or someone who knows her well reads this, please let me know if she is related to wild red-headed Scott Livolsi who was a mainstay camper and staffer in the 80s.

Oldtimers eyeballing this village staff will count up the C's and gawk and the gaudiness: six counselors in one village, plus the VC. They lived in cabins 41-45, on "the hill": thus, That means 7 counseling-level staff for 5 cabins. Not to mention the JCs (called ACs in that era). Wow. I say: wow. Earlier, there was a VC and four counselors. Plus 2 JCs. The VC had a JC, as did one other counselor. The other three counselors managed their cabins without assistance. I'm not saying such understaffing was good; but it surely made for a different dynamic (and greater rates of burnout by the end of the summer).

Several of you have asked about the distinction between "AC" and "JC"--a point of which I'm only vaguely aware (since it was only a mid-90s phenomenon), but here's Karin Turer: "AC is not just a different name for JC - it was a legal difference: Associate (not Assistant) Counselors are over 18; JCs were 17. That is what we were told in 1993 (again, I am super-sensitive to this because the change ate up a lot of my cohort!) when FV decided to have more 18+ staff. Maybe it changed later on (and looking at this list, I had Diane in Taco 44 in 1993, so it's hard to believe she'd have been 18 already by 1995!) but as far as the kids my age were told, the AC was simply a way to have a bridge between JCs and Cs." I'm a little sad to think that an administrative decision (a reasonable one, in my view--to be sure) could be thought of, even at this distance, as having eaten up a cohort (FV generation).

Katie Kelly adds this: As far as the entry about Tacoma in 1995 - that definitely gave me a laugh. Georgia Chown is in fact from Australia; she's not "a crazy brit" as D'Arcy seems to remember her. Then there is the whole JC vs. AC thing. I think that the AC designation was brought about for a couple of reasons. One being a legal issue as was mentioned - if the staff member wasn't 18 yet but they had been a JC, then they were an AC. Cara Coffina fell into this category as she had a summer birhday. Her birthday is in fact a day after mine, but I became staff prior to this being an issue at the time. I don't remember though if one was about to be "promoted" to a full counselor if they had the birthday over the summer and turned 18 at which point they were now technically able to care for kids without "adult" supervision.

Diane Sacker adds: In the summer of '95 I was 16 (I have an October birthday) and I'm pretty sure I was Meghan Conley's JC and for some reason they gave us cabin 45 (the oldest cabin).

** from D'Arcy Oaks

emergency: turns out to be just a gassy stomach

When I recently cornered Mark Gottdenker and Eric Blum and asked them to tell me a camp story, I could have predicted that it would have something to do with a medical emergency. After all, most of Blum's FV time has had something to do with being a medical first-responder. I won't tell more about the story than that. It's definitely an instance of the bizarre ongoing Gottdenker-Blum Show, thus not entirely comprehensible to the sane outside world, but I'll bet that 40% of those who listen to the audio will be able to follow it. To the rest of you, well, you can just enjoy the tone, the absolute sense of fraternalism and buddyism that these two camp characters always evince. Camp guys through and through. Gottdenker's first summer was as a camper in '79 and I remember him (for some reason--why?) very clearly that summer. Since I was the camp director then, I'm suspecting it was either because he was homesick or ill-behaved, or possibly both at once. Next time I see Mark I'll ask him.

Oh yes: I didn't get a photo of Mark and Eric together. Above you say Jeff Daly and Eric on the rainy check-out day, end of session 3 this summer. Good enough, I'd say; these two are lifelong pals in the same sort of way.

Lenape 1995

Lenape staff photo 1995. Back row, left to right: Owen Flanagan (from Scotland), Derek Furr*, D'Arcy Oaks, James Raffo, O'Neil Guthrie, Khalid Jenkins. Front row, left to right: Ed Zimmerman, Zach First, Jim Barilla, Eric Schneider. Not pictured: Rick McKay, Kevin Pricket, Alex Shalom, David Sacher, Damion Frye. (Jim Barilla came back years later--in 2003, I think--to do a half-summer stint as a camp director.) The village chief recalls a few things:

Katie Kelly was Tacoma VC. Pete Swain called the NY State Police on some of our campers for graffiti on the Dining Hall chimney. This was the first summer that anyone could remember that there were no fistfights in Lenape (but there was one in Tacoma). I remember that at Hirdstock two of our campers did the first-ever Hirdstock rap, a clever play on the words "peace"
and "piece" (as in, a handgun). One camper tried to walk back to Jersey, and it took me, three directors, and the staff nurse to convince him not to.

* Derek had a "famous camper brother" named Joey. Thanks to J.D. Louis for this info.

origins of "Silence" & "Ultimate Sicko Ball"

D'Arcy John Oaks (kneeling with backpack in photo), a Frost Valley lifer and one of the staff stars of the 1990s, paid an eventful four-hour visit to the valley in early July, during the current summer's session 1. An old buddy of Jeff Daly and Bob Eddings, who together now run summer camp, D'Arcy was hooked up with Hemlock & Sacky '07 and introduced to them as one of the creators of their favorite combined cheer, now called "Silence." Here is D'Arcy's description of his visit, starting with his guest appearance at "Silence":

The kids from Hemlock and Sacky asked me to do the "Silence" cheer (which we used to call "Knights and Maidens") with them. That was pretty awesome. Back in like '91 there was a massive "cheer war" in the Hird, especially between Lenape and Hemlock. "Knights and Maidens" was written to combine the shouting strength of Sacky and Hemlock (80 kids) to over-power Lenape (40 kids). Jeff helped write that cheer with me and a bunch of Hemlock/Sacky counselors (Ellie Gordon, Malik Jenkins, Cybil Ryan, Ed Zimmerman, Sam McTieran, and others) right before Session 1 started in that summer (either '91 or '92). I was proud to see that the Hird kids still play "Ultimate Sicko Ball," which is this crazy 4-team capture the flag game they play on Big Tree Field. In something like 1990 or 1991 Josh Tucker, John Turer, and I decided the Hird needed a game that every Hird camper could play at the same time, thus the beginning of "Ultimate Sicko Ball." It involves four teams, a lot of balls that are the flags, tagging, jails, no-mans-land, hoola-hoops, throwing, kicking, catching. Its really great. [Editor's note: here's a photo taken of the four teams all set up in the Big Tree Field just prior to one such USB game.] I can't believe they still play that game. I was wearing my classic early '70's FV half-sleeve jersey and, like you've been writing in your blog, old FV shirts are noticed and desired by both staff and campers. Jeff introduced me to the Hird campers over the PA right before hoopla and all the kids cheered my return to FV...I felt like a rock-star.

And then, still D'Arcy talking about his visit, there's this, almost inevitable strong feelings of gratitude:

Of course right before Jeff and I said good bye we had that teary-eyed conversation of how important Frost Valley was to our becoming the fine adults that we are now (ha!)... that FV helped us develop courage to challenge ourselves, champion the underdog, take responsibility for ourselves and others, be proactive, have the courage to hold an individual opinion different from others, be able to take charge and lead a group of people, resolve conflicts, be thankful for the little things, act local and think global...many of our personal characteristics which we are most proud can be traced to some extent to being young people at Frost Valley. We acknowledged to each other that we owed Frost Valley, big time.

Now here's D'Arcy John Oaks' FV profile:

1990 - Hemlock JC
1991 - Hemlock counselor
1992 - Hemlock counselor
1993 - PAC counselor
1995 - Lenape VC
1996 - Hemlock VC
1997 - CIT Coordinator
1998 - Recovery Camp/Discovery Camp Director

The photo above was taken in 1995 and shows director Peter Swain and Lenape VC D'Arcy Oaks explaining some camp rule or another to a Lenape camper.