Al Chrone, helped Wawayanda in early FV days, has died

Al Chrone, long associated with the Westfield NJ YMCA, has died. In the early days of Wawayanda at Frost Valley, from 1958 through the early 1960s, Al worked hard to enroll Westfield and Westfield-area children into camp sessions here and also at Camp Speers (later Speers/Eljabar).

Below is a 1961 newspaper article reporting that the first three camp sessions at Wawayanda were full and that there were a few openings for fourth session. It was Al Chrone who announced this from his position at the Westfield Y. (For a slightly better image of the article, click on the image below.)

Al Chrone was beloved by the people at Speers-Eljabar and here is the text of the announcement made by them:

Dear Friends,
I am deeply saddened to inform you of the passing of a beloved member of the Camp Family, Al Chrone. Al was a young YMCA program director who in 1947-8 helped recruit the first group of campers to participate in what was at the time the first racially integrated YMCA Camp in the Y system. In subsequent years, Al became the Camp Director of Camp Speers. He and his family lived in the rustic cabin that sat above the lake each summer. Campers of that era often recall Al fishing during the evenings off the dock below the Director's Cabin. As "Taps" was played by the Camp Bugler, he would reel in his fishing line and go make his nightly rounds of the camp. Al later became the CEO of the Madison (NJ) YMCA where he continued to promote Camp Speers-Eljabar YMCA and summer camp experience for kids.
Al and his wife, Rae have been lifelong supports of Camp Speers-Eljabar YMCA. The Chrone Cabin now stands at the location of the old Director's Cabin and our annual award for program excellence is named in his honor. The Al Chrone Program Service Award is given to the group or individual who have supported, enhanced, and enriched our programs through their participation and leadership. The most recent recipient of the Al Chrone Program Service Award is Bob Lomauro, CEO of the Somerset Hills YMCA.
I was blessed to work with Al at the Madison YMCA during my college years as a part time sports instructor and then as an intern. At one point during my Junior year of college internship at the Madison Y, Al encouraged me to work at a sleep away camp as a way to really understand the depth and breadth of YMCA work. Of course, he pointed me to Camp Speers-Eljabar YMCA. I'm happy to give Al all the credit for helping me to connect with Camp Speers-Eljabar YMCA - a connection that has lasted all of my adult life and enriched my life beyond description.
There will be no funeral service. In lieu of flowers, the family would appreciate donations in Al's name to any YMCA of your choice or to Bayshore Home Keystyle Living at 512 Bayshore Rd. Nokomis FL 34275. Cards and letters of sympathy may be sent to Rae Chrone 324 Dolphin Shores Circle Nokomis, FL 34275.

Bill Hawkins, 1959

Bill Hawkins was a counselor at Frost Valley in 1959, just one summer. But he's a Y lifer and later did 30-plus years after his Wawayanda summer. I've been in touch with him for years, but recently we had this exchange:

Al: Have you made plans to come to the big Frost Valley reunion over Labor Day?

Bill: No, unfortunately. Give my best wishes to anyone who attends from the summer of 1959!

Al: By the way, Dave & Shirley King will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in July.

Bill: We celebrated our 50th last December 26th ... being married kept me from returning to FV in 1960 - so went to YMCA Camp Bernie with Merrill Oleson.

Al: Wawayanda didn't permit married couples on the staff in that era?

Bill: Yes, they did permit it .. but had limited accommodations for married staff ... all the available positions were filled by others ... I didn't have any seniority！

Al: What was the position you would have been going for in '60?

Bill: In 1959 I was the cabin counselor in #25 ... since I got married the following December I really never thought about a position except I was interested in the trip program for older boys ... I went to Camp Bernie as the Program Director ... it was, of course, a much smaller camp ... but I needed a job for a pregnant wife as well ... so she became the secretary for the director of Camp Bernie ... we returned to Bernie in '61 at the end of the summer I joined the Ridewood Y staff and the rest is history ... 34 years as a Y Professional before my retirement in 1995.

Al: I find this all so interesting. Do you remember what the accommodations for you would have been at Frost Valley if you and your wife had worked there? Castle? Pigeon Lodge? So you went from cabin counselor at Wawayanda in '59 to Program Director at Bernie in '60!

Bill: I have no idea about accommodations as the possibility didn't exist. My early YMCA "career" was from cabin counselor at YMCA Camp Abe Lincoln (Davenport, Iowa) in 1958, to cabin counselor at YMCA Camp Wawayanda in 1959, to program director at YMCA Camp Bernie in 1960 and 1961 ... then into a full-time Y job ... I returned to Camp Bernie in 1965 to become the first resident director ... left in 1969 to join the staff of the Westfield YMCA ... where I led the purchase of property and the development of the YMCA Four Seasons Outdoor Center in Hunterdon County ... but it was later sold by the YMCA and it became the Hunterdon Learning Center.

1956 staff list

Yes, you read that right--1956. A rare item. This was of course before Wawayanda moved to Frost Valley. If anyone knows there whereabouts of any of these people, please let me know.

Dave King and Bud Cox both remember that Art Lockett stayed with Wawayanda and became a staff member at Frost Valley. Dave remembers that Art worked in Outpost in '58. Dave also wonder if Larry B. Gatlin of Oklahoma City could be the Larry Gatlin of country music fame. Ah, but the famed Larry Gatlin was born in 1948 (in Texas) and would have been just 8 years old at the time of this Wawayanda staff.

50 years

Campers and staff gather on the Castle lawn during the summer of 2008 to celebrate 50 years of camping at Frost Valley, 1958-2008.

cabin 13 when first built

This is almost certainly cabin 13 in Outpost - a photo taken very soon after the cabin was built in '58. Cabins 11 and 13 stood (and stand--but they are numbered differently and it's no longer Outpost there) along the left side of the field in the flat two flats up from the main level of camp. Between 11 and 13 was and is a path through the woods that leads up to the new cluster of five cabins, originally Lenape (16-20). Behind the cabin you see a tall tree. It's gone and what's located there now is Quirk Lodge, the super-est of the SuperLodges of the 90s.

Ken Nathanson thinks this might be cabin 6. But the slope seems too steep to me, and the woods too near. Hmmmm. Kenny writes: "Yea, from memory I thought the slope was too steep too, but after seeing the photo of yours that I linked to I see that cabin seemed to have a good slope to it. I don’t see how that could be cabin 14. Cabin 13’s front faced the trail as you walked up and cabin 14 would be to the right. Plus looking carefully at photo there is a lot of open space to the left of that cabin." Here's the view of cabin 6, from further back, in the mid-60s.

- - -

Geoff Hazel is sure this is cabin 13. He was a camper there in 1961 and remembers that as a cabin project the campers painted the then-raw wood cabin with creosote.

dining hall

The dining hall, a photo taken by Mike DeVita, not longer after its construction was completed (I'm guessing it's late spring/early summer 1959). The shot is taken from the east of the building. Mike was standing at the top of the wide path that came up from the lower flat - the path that now runs behind Margetts Lodge.

Forest Village, 1958

Forest Village in its first summer at Frost Valley, 1958. First row, left to right: Dick Nice (cabin 7), assistant village chief; "Hutch" Hutchinson, J.C.; Mike DeVita, Village Chief; Row 2, left to right: Dave Andresen, cabin 8; Larry Kaufmann, 6; Chet McLemore, cabin 10; Bill Bedall, 9.

Behind and to the left you see the "Rec Hall," the Forstmann cow barn which then, in '58, served as the dining hall and indoor activity building. Just above McLemore's head: Doubletop Mountain.

first Wawayanda staff at Frost Valley

Here's the very first staff list at Frost Valley, 1958.

July 4, 1959

This is a photo I've admired for years. One of the great shots of the early era. It's 1959, July 4. To kick off the celebration, three staff re-enacted the spirit of '76: Mike DeVita, Dave King, Tom Squires. They led everyone from flag raising to the dining hall. (To orient you: that's the old Forstmann garage, then the Arts & Crafts shop, now the bottom floor of Hayden Lodge, off to the right. So the three are actually going, for the moment, in the wrong direction; they must have looped around.)

first lifers

Hal Ressmeyer and Mike DeVita saying goodbye to campers at the end of fourth session. These boys were in Forest all 8 weeks. Frost Valley's first lifers. Where are they now? Does anyone recognize them by name? Notice the lanyard hanging from the belt of the boy in black.

Rick Sanborn, CIT

Rick Sanborn. He was a CIT in 1959, Wawayanda's second summer at Frost Valley. He spent as much time as he could that summer at the waterfront. (Photo courtesy Mike DeVita.)

Outpost '58

This is cabin 12 (now numbered 8 and called "Infinity" when the eight is turned sideways) in its very first summer. Brand new! Note the carefully tended rocks around the porch "foundation." This was Outpost Village that summer, and for many years later until the late 80s. For most of those years the VC of Outpost lived in 12 (it sits in the center of the uphill flat-ish semi-circle that used to be cabins 11 through 15). In '58 the VC was Bruce Bohrer and that's Bruce.

"Roman Celebration Day"

1959. It's an all-camp program, one of those thematic gigs: "Roman Celebration Days." Ralph Holt leads Ceaesar (Mike DeVita) to the dining hall during the Roman Celebration Days. Camp secretary Marian is at his side (one of the few women in camp). The campers from Mike's cabin in Forest Village hold the cape as his attendants. And below is another shot of DeVita and his attendants, looking fairly dramatic and authentic.

was a man with a great big nose, and KINGO was his name-o

Yes, your eyes tell you rightly: that's Dave King, standing by one of those tall beech trees at the old Wawayanda Chapel. Just this morning, the middle Sunday of session two...always a slow day: late wake-up, "morning reflection" organized by the CITs.

Dave and Shirley King - and daughter Kathy and her three kids - have been here visiting. I anticipated Dave's visit by telling a story, called "Sawmill, 1958," for days, weeks ahead. Dave is one of the main figures in the story. It's a gesture toward celebrating 50 years of Wawayanda camping at FV - as is Dave's visit itself.

He and I have already been to countless village campfires, telling stories. Dave has met cabins and villages at the Castle to talk about FV history. And yesterday, Dave led songs at the dining hall after both lunches. As a throw-back (part of the 50th year celebration, I take it), the directors had the boys eat together and then the girls eat together - first time that had happened since the early 80s. He ended with Kum-ba-yah, one of his favorite songs. By all accounts, it was a beautiful moment. There were tears in Dave's eyes as he realized that such a figure - nothwithstanding the legend - could be so warmly and openly welcomed after all this time. One Dave started to tear up, so did Shirley and then Kathy too. (I missed all this, sadly, as I was at the Board of Trustees meeting taking place under a tent at Reflection Pond. I hope someone has recorded it.)

Then at dinner Shirley and Kathy presented to Dave - as a surprise - a Frost Valley Memory Book. The gave it to him in a white laundry bag, with the orange WAWAYANDA lettering and dark-blue canoe-and-pine-trees logo.

I have the Memory Book here with me, having borrowed it for this blog entry. It's full of old photographs, words from old camp friends, lyrics to songs Dave loved to lead, etc. My favorite among the pictures - I think it might be my favorite of all the shots of early camp here at FV - is the one in which we see Dave (on the drum - really a trash barrell) leading the fife-and-drum corps as part of the July 4 celebration in (maybe) 1959. That's Mike DeVita holding the flag, by the way. (Mike wrote me to tell me this. The third guy is Bob [last name?], a village chief, Mike says.)

Let me quote from a few of the friends' remembrances:

"It was the teamwork and long-lasting friendship between Dave and Halbe forty-seven years ago that set the stage for what Frost Valley has become today." - Halbe and Jane Brown

"You, Dave King, made the harmony possible for me. And I've passed it on, singing your tune, with all my heart."--Al Filreis

"Just before the magical first summer at Frost Valley ended for us [1958], you walked with me to a quiet spot along Hemlock Brook behind Cabin 18. While the passage of time has erased the words you shared, it cannot erase the fondness I felt for you then and now. Your gift to me was a small book of the New Testament that I cherish to this day." - Mike Ketcham

"Dave inspired us. I remember in particular a sermon he gave to the staff one time at all-camp chapel just before the kids arrived. He spoke of the phrase from the Sermon on the Mount: "You are the light of the World." You as counselors, he said, will be the light of the world for the campers coming into your care. Slo "hold high the torch" - be the best example you can be for them." - Doug Cresson

"...and then the Big Arm would swing through the air and smack flat against a table as we all cried out: PATsy orey orey ay, PATsy orey orey ay, PATsy orey orey ay, Working on the railroad!" - Rick Cobb

"As I write this I can't help but wonder if you were actually hiding in the bushes when we returned from staff lounge over 35 years ago or it that's just what you led us to believe." - Jody Ketcham

"Before I even met him I was told Dave had this big flashlight, which Kathy later told me she called "The Bat Beam." If you were out after curfew, his beam might catch you. The beam never caught me but I was very much aware of it." -- Carolyn Shelburne

"...the really big man with the really big voice. I have never forgotten him or the experiences I had at Frost Valley. Congratulations to Dave on 50s years at Frost Valley!" - Bill Starmer

The sun came out and dried up the landy landy
Sun it came out and dried up the landy landy
Everything was fine and dandy dandy
Children of the Lord.

Click here for a short video of Dave. (Be patient, as it will take a minute to load.)

hope you had the time of your life

Brendan Heldenfels put together a beautiful 9 1/2-minute video montage, set to stirring music, of photographs across all years. It's been posted to YouTube. Just get your popcorn, dim the lights, find someone to whom you want to tell camp stories, and click on the image above.

You're tuning into an old-style radio, with a dial. Turn the dial a bit and hear a song from the '60s (and now the cabins are new, the docks at the lake seem in the wrong place, a few crewcuts mixed with some fairly hip-looking characters), finger the dial again and it's another time and set of images. Tune time back and forward.

A number of the photographs date back to the Old Wawayanda prior to the move to Frost Valley fifty summers ago. But for the most part the video traces our work and play across the decades, with songs and photos from the 60s, then the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s. Certain themes merge in and out of the decades: coming & going; the buildings; outdoor education and conferencing; etc.

Some highlights to watch for:

[] Halbe Brown's red plaid pants, circa 1976.

[] wellness-minded girl campers surround chain-smoker Chuck White as they take his blood pressure and listen to his heart.

[] misty sunrise over Lake Cole.

[] Eva Gottscho (co-creator of our dialysis program) with dialysis camper Stevie Bell in her lap.

[] the late John Ketcham blowing on the embers, in Canada, a Trailblazer for all time.

[] Wawayanda camp directors across the decades gather together to lead the noonday grace at a recent reunion.

[] You ain't goin' nowhere.

[] Lenape boys, clad in white Wawayanda tees, head out for an overnight...walking in a perfectly straight line.

[] the old garage before it was Hayden Lodge.

[] the late Oran Giannotti hanging out with good friends.

[] tons of Hirdstock shots.

[] lighting the Olympic torch.

[] everyone wearing really short shorts.

[] Mac guy learns to ride a bike.

I hope you had the time of you life. If so, I'll be joining you in that good company.

we've been up to Wawayanda...

Mike DeVita remembers the early years of Wawayanda at Frost Valley, in a tribute to Dave King:

I HAVE A ZILLION memories of Wawayanda and Dave King. We both started there together after a summer break-in at Camp Conoy in Lusby, Maryland. I remember our first week at camp when we were first year VILLAGE CHIEFS (WOW! IN CHARGE AND WE HAD ONLY HAD ONE YEAR UNDER OUR BELTS). It worked out so well that Dave eventually became Program Director, then Camp Director and I eventually became HIS Program Director. Little bits: Singing on Sundays in the Camp Trio/quartette; Breaking down the rafters in the OLD DINING ROOM when we did a Rock and Roll Tribute and mimicked 'YAKETY YAK'/ the duets in the dining room...."Where's the golf ball, Dave?" "What golf.....mmph."/ leading the camp in singing "Michael Row the Boat" and "Kum By Ya" in dining room and at campfires/ the "privileged information and casual talks we had together when he was "the boss" (jest becuz we was friends)/ "The Mutt and Jeff" jokes/ scheduling overnights when everyone waited for me to select my overnight dates so they could steer clear of them and NOT get caught on a rainly overnight (it happened every time we went out).....gosh I could go on forever but I will stop and give someone else a chance. I am only sorry i got "out of the habit" or returning to Wawayanda...while Dave has become a "fixture."

Jim Ewen & Ellen Rutan (audio)

Photo taken last night here in Philadelphia: Ellen, my kids, and Jim.

Jim Ewen and Ellen Rutan stopped by yesterday to pay an annual pre-Thanksgiving visit. I feel so currently connected to them - or, rather, that I've been consistently connected to them over the years - that I was startled to remember that they stopped working at Frost Valley in around 1973! Jim's time at camp ran from 1959 through '73, and Ellen was there from around '63 to '73. Jim was part of the Westfield, NJ, gang that clustered around the great public high school there, the various sports teams, and the Westfield Y. Jim's dad, Ed, ran that Y, and established a close relationship to Wawayanda. In fact Ed was a member of Frost Valley's "camp committee" or "Wawayanda Committee" and was a member of the hiring committee, led by Woody English, that chose Halbe Brown to be the new associate executive director in 1966.

Jim and Ellen are among those couples that met at Frost Valley. It's a nice story, and in the conversation we had last night, which I recorded, they tell it. The met at camp, fell in love, and 30 years later are together and still very very fondly remember anc cherish their FV experience.

Some of the folks mentioned in this convo: Peggy Rub, John Ketcham, Bev Gross, Dave King, Peggy Hope....

So here is the link to the audio recording of these two wonderful people remembering their FV time. Below are two photos taken of Jim during the 2001 reunion. Jim led the chapel service that Sunday morning in the old Wawayanda Chapel.


Above: Jim and Lisa Ernst.

talk about your lifer!

Paul Augustine (Lt Col, USAF, retired) went on nine of the 10 Trailblazer trips that went canoeing in Canada. Nine of 10!

Paul wrote me today: "These trips with Jim Wilkes and Bill Starmer were instrumental in shaping and guiding young men in the right direction; especially in my case. I had had several brushes with the law before I joined the Trailblazers and my success as an Air Force pilot I directly attribute to lessons learned on these trips. I've never been able to thank them enough!"

For more on Jim Wilkes, go here. According to Jim, Paul Augustine's father was a member of Frost Valley's Board of Trustees. For more about Augustine and 1960, go here.

first time up Doubletop (video)

Hike up Doubletop: late June 2006, with Bud Cox, myself, and Bill Abbott. I have some great pictures of this trip, but I'll add them later. We left camp at 8 am on this particular Saturday in the drizzling rain, and maybe it was 60 degrees, but no warmer. And we decided to climb up a little-used way - up High Falls Brook, which of course comes down the mountain far far above where most folks see the brook (at High Falls itself). Following the brook to its source (which is really a bunch of swampy streams) we walked through mud and brambles, and it was still raining.

So there were nicer days of hiking, but this was fun. When we got to the two tops of Doubletop, the rain and fog lifted and so we were able to see down to camp (you can see the Ad Office from up there!). But...but...now we were hit by swarms of black flies.

Oh, and as a bonus, here's a video of Bud being Bud - hilarious - as we rested during the final ascent (very steep) up the High Falls Brook-side (or western) ridge.

Send me your first-time-up-Doubletop stories.

The first (in several respects, as you'll see) is Bill Sonsin, who goes way back, wrote me about recent posts to this blog: "The 'first time up Doubletop' and 'Hemlock cabin 24' together brought back memories. I was in Hemlock #24 in the summer of 1959. Art Fritz was the counselor. I think we were the absolute first group [from the camp] to climb Doubletop, ever." Fritz was from Westfield and a student at Syracuse University (class of 1962). Other campers besides Bill from cabin 24 that summer were Ron Lochly, Ed Kieling, Chipper Hoeck, Robert Floyd, Joe Allen, and Dave Edsall.

Here are two more Doubletop firsts.

happy 50th, Dave King

The photo shows Dave King and me leading "Deep & Wide" at the Labor Day 2006 reunion. Once again I long for such good moments achingly.

This very afternoon I spent a little more than an hour talking with Dave by phone, and we recorded the conversation. Click on this link and you will be able to play an hour-long mp3 sound file. If you right-click on that link, you can save the file to your computer and/or mp3 player; if you left-click you can play the recording. If you want to stream it, you can click on the right-facing triangle in the circle next to the link.

And here is a 6-minute excerpt about the summer of 1958.

During this interview, I learned a few things I had never ever heard or known before. I had never asked anyone about the details of using the swimming hole (muddy and awful) that had been dug in the field across from the Castle for the summer of 1958 - where the campers took swimming lessons before Lake Cole was built in '59. I also didn't know or didn't remember that in the first years the area across the bridge (Pigeon and Biscuit Lodges, Reflection Pond, and the Castle) was off limits to everyone, staff included. I didn't know that the Castle wasn't called "the Castle" until Jim Whyte was the executive director in the early 60s. I hadn't heard the story of the camper who drowned on one of the canoe trips in the early years. I hadn't realized that the staff were still finishing the new cabins during staff training just days before the campers arrived in June of '58.

Many folks know about the plane that crashed on Doubletop in 1966. But did you know that in 1968, during a holdover weekend, a small plane crash-landed in the Castle field? During our discussion, Dave talked about that one. And since posting this initially, I've heard from Ken Nathanson about that incident. Ken must have been 11 or 12 at the time, and he happened to be staying in the Castle that weekend and saw the crash. Here's Ken: I actually have my father’s old movies of the recovery of the plane. There is good footage of Dave, Halbe, Paul, Joe Chandler, Bud, John Paul, me and Peter Tilles, etc. I actually saw the plane come down into the field as I was walking up the steps to the patio of the castle. I ran up to the tower to see if I could find it and sure enough the tail was sticking up out of a small ditch. It took a bit of convincing to have the castle staff call for help. This was the summer holdover in ’68.

Well, in the summer of 2008 it will have been 50 years since Dave King, at 20 years old, came to Wawayanda at Frost Valley as the VC of Lenape. A few years later Dave was the Program Director and then began a long era as Boys' Camp Director. During all my years as a camper, Dave was my camp director. Later, when I was made a young Program Director (at 19 years old!), Dave came back for a half-summer as Camp Director and suddenly I found myself in the position of working as a co-director alongside the legendary King. I had been one of his kids, and now I was a colleague. Yikes. During the first summer or two working together as directors (we were Mutt & Jeff in height, that's for sure), he taught me a tremendous amount and we worked closely together for several years before he left Frost Valley to do full-year work as a superintendent of the Baltimore public schools. Between us as directors, we spanned 1963 to 1985 (to be sure, with others as well: Mike Ketcham, Bob Hettler, Jim Ewen and a few others) and more generally our involvement covers the whole 50 years to the present.

For a few years in the late 60s and 70s, Dave was a member of Frost Valley's Board of Trustees. But because he was in Baltimore, and the meetings were held on weeknights in Montclair, Dave could not attend often and he felt it necessary to resign his seat.

You can hear in this interview my repeated invitation to Dave to come visit us for a few days during the summer of '08. If he and Shirley do make the visit, we will be sure to sing Dave as well as Frost Valley a joyful rendition of "Happy Birthday" in honor of our 50th.