Hemlock in the mud, 1960

Two of these muddy lads are campers of Jim Wilkes: Les Blane and Paul Achinapura. The year is 1960. The village is Hemlock, cabins 21-25. I'm fairly certain that cabin 23 is behind Jim (who took the photo) and that that's cabin 24in the background.

Jim Wilkes remembers: "They had been throwing mud pies at each other on the cabin porch. So I said, 'Okay, men, there is a mud hole over younder on the other side of the ferns, filled with fresh rain water. Go empty it with your hands and feet!'"

Upon seeing this entry, Dave King remembered Paul as follows: "I remember Paul when he was in Lenape in 1959. Paul was truly one of the great characters in the village. Paul's father was in charge of all personnel (not diplomats) for the United Nations property in New York. I took several 9th-grade class field trips to NY to see the Statue of Liberty, and to visit the UN. Paul's dad arranged visits which were truly memorable. On one visit, my kids met the Secretary General, Uh Thant, who was most gracious."

Eric Wechter's son

Eric Wechter, who was himself in Hemlock 26 years ago, brought his son Benjamin back to camp--to be in Hemlock!--along with his mother, whom I hadn't seen in the same 26 years (or so).

Lenape/Hemlock

This summer's Hemlock and Lenape VCs: Mike Taylor and Jackson Patterson, respectively.

service

Some Hemlock counselors and campers were walking past Reflection Pond yesterday, on their way to the Castle. They noticed that one of the logs had come off its mooring on a carved-out stump. No one said a thing. They wordlessly knew the little project ahead. Together they lifted the very heavy hemlock trunk and put it back in place, and then continued on their way. The counselor--responsible for the good communal attitude of these boys, I think--is Chris Young. Came to us from another camp last summer, Penn State University student, and all-round good guy.

Jon Coates

International counselor from England (York, to be specific), fab soccer player, great counselor who became the Hemlock VC, early to mid-80s...Jon Coates...emails me out of the blue this morning. Here's Jon:

"Discovered your blog by chance a couple of days ago and have thoroughly enjoyed the happy memories it has brought back. Hard to believe it's 26 years since I was first introduced to FV and 18 since I last visited. I was last there in 1990 when I drove up from New York where we were on a football (soccer) tour with a team from the Bahamas. I spent the afternoon with the Swains and a very young Bradley who I now see is not so little and has joined the staff ranks.

I'm now back in York (have been for about 12 years now), married to Liz with 2 beautiful kids, Maya (9) and Joel (7) and working with the Youth Service."

April running brooks

The combination of snow run-off from Doubletop and a goodly amount of spring rain makes brooks that a normally just a trickle - and completely dry by August - run fast. Between the dining hall and cabins 21-25 flows one such stream. When Wawayanda first moved to Frost Valley in '58 and for many years later, this was known as Hemlock Brook (named presumably after the village that inhabited those cabins from 1958 to 1983). In recent years it's been called Trickle Brook - apt since, as I say, it's not much more than a trickle most of the year. Most FV'ers know this thing because after a big storm it flows right through the Big Tree Field and then is directed under the county road and after that moves through the horse field and into the Neversink.

If you walk above the dining hall area you'll see that Hemlock Brook also runs along the western edge of cabins 13-17 (formerly 16-20), the site of the newest renovated cabins we've been talking about lots on this blog. If you go to cabin 17 (20) and walk directly behind - "cabin 20's backyard" - you will go down a ravine fairly steeply and there's your brook.

Mid-April '08: right there this creek was running fast, little waterfalls all along the way. Here's one of the pics I snapped.

sports village

For a few years in the early 1980s we had (in the first session of the summer) a special "Hemlock" that consisted of campers who signed up for various sports specialty villages - gymnastics, soccer, and basketball. Here are the gymnastics folks from '81. That's Kathy Bell on the shoulders of the kindly and mighty Jersey Cityan, Mike Ford. To Kathy's left (our right) is the legendary John Paul Thomas, special gymnastics instructor that summer but a long-time FV guy (came in '67 or '68 and ran archery, was a VC, later came back to work fulltime for several years, in two stints, as FV's conference director, played a wonderful guitar). To Kathy's right (our left) is the specialty village VC, Tom Franzkowiak, of Germany (who was also a fabulously successful VC of Forest). In the front row (doing splits), fourth from our right, in the glasses, is Jenny Brown - Halbe and Jane's daughter.

This photo comes to us courtesy of Bill Abbott - who was in that village, on the soccer end. The soccer coach was Eugene Orbaker.

new cabins in place

All five of the new cabins are in place and finished sufficiently for weekend guests to stay in them. Three of the old cabins (once numbered 16-20--Lenape; more recently, 13-17--Hemlock) are still there, two having been moved away into the possession of alumni who bid highest for them. Here is a photograph taken this past weekend, showing several of the new cabins and one of the old ones (#19 or 16). The new ones have two bathrooms, with great showers, and a small but very nice counselor's room.

cold shower technique for learning Greek

Hemlock, cabin 24, 1964. Back row: Jim VanZant, Fred Partridge, Pete Trias. Sitting on railing: R. Cantor, D.P. Blackford, A. Pinderhughes, Geoffrey Hazel. Sitting on the ground: S. Umberger, Greg Peach. Counselor: T. Brown.

Geoff Hazel remembers: "At night, the counselors would leave and we'd all stay up swapping stories and jokes (yeah, I don't think we want to get into what those jokes were, now do we?). Anyway, sometimes we'd get a little loud, and at least once every 2 weeks, our counselor would barge in and we'd each have to sit in the shower, with the cold water running, and recite the Greek alphabet. And since he was in the Omega fraternity, we'd have to say Omega about 10 times. It was kinda fun, and I learned the Greek alphabet along the way."

hoopla redux

One way of thinking of the 90s is as the Hoopla Era. At the 2001 reunion some of the 90s' staff had been gone just a few years, while others of course were returning after nearly a decade. (The recent FV decades are especially long in this sense.)

Hoopla is a kind of program unto itself. (This past summer I overheard one camper say to another as they walked into lunch: "Oh, today's the last day of hoopla of the session. I hope it's really good.")

Hoopla is gumbo updated.

Hoopla is a cross between cheerleading, slam dancing, doing the dozens, and a seance.

Hoopla is shouting Olympics-style, only every damned-fool day.

What earlier generations called "cheers" - which is to say the post-lunch village chants and cheer-songs and shouts - more recently is called "hoopla." Actually the word was first used to describe all the post-lunch craziness in the mid-80s. In those days it was a synonym for everything--announcements, songs led from the front of the room, skits (usually one skit per day), spontaneous singing, as well as the cheers (only the latter being the villages taking turns to be loudly proud).

And the village-to-village challenges, one-ups-man-ship of the cheers chanted in turn...all that dates back to the mid-60s. When Hemlock chanted

Chip chop!
chip chop!
chip chop!
Forest falls again!

it was a big blow to Forest's collective ego. The next day, Hemlock got up and Outpost joined them. Uh, felt Forest. Worse. The next day they did it again but this time, immediately after the cheer was done, Forest rose and shouted "On you!" The next day Totem added a rejoinder after "On you!" and so on, until the Chip Chop cheer took about 20 minutes to get through all the sequences of rejoinders.

I'm not sure how seriously anyone should be taking any of this, but it surely is the second or third thing people remember from their summer days in the valley.

At the 2001 reunion there was a bit of culture shock for the older folks, as after one lunch the 90s' guys took over, gathering together in the middle of the dining hall tables, and did one cheer after another, many of them combined village cheers (e.g. "The Hill" for both villages in cabins 41-50 or "Silence," which began--I think--as a Hemlock-Sacky cheer). It was impressive. At the 2006 reunion I made a video of this same group--now a bit greyer and some with their own children in tow--did a wonderful reprise of "Silence." I'll try to find that video and put it up and link to this blog. Meantime, here's a photo from the '01 reunion.

"I was reading your blog," writes Ashley O'Hara (1988-1998), "the Silence cheer was a Sacky-Hemlock cheer. I was a camper the year it was introduced. Jeff Daly, Malik Jenkins, Tameka Brown...were all counselors that year. They made it up during staff training and we had our first campfire and they taught it to us. I will never forget that day when we first did the cheer during Hoopla. We did really silence everyone. It was an amazing thing to be part of during that summer. Great FV memories. Don't remember the year to be exact... I'm 27 now. Love reading all about FV."

giving kids the second chance

Pictured here: Bob Eddings (left) and Steve Parsley.

I've mentioned the remarkable Bob Eddings in these entries before, but finally caught up with him and had a good conversation, part of which you can hear here.

Hemlock '69

From a 1969 photo of Hemlock village, here is a close-up showing some of the Hemlock staff that summer. At bottom right is Mark Kramer. Just above Mark is Stu Sherman (I'm guessing Stu was an LIT or JC that summer). Just to the left of Stu is Pat Ricciardi. You can't tell from this photo that Pat was literally the strongest person in camp. He could move anything, lift anything - built like an ox, as we used to say. To Pat's left is Sven Grotian, mentioned earlier in this blog--one of my favorite camp people ever. I cannot recognize the person standing above Sven. Is he Rick Schermer? The camper at the bottom left, with the long dark hair in a middle part, is Peter Pappas.

Mark Kramer is now a businessman in southeast Florida. His wife and kids visited FV at one reunion in the 90s or another. Other than that he hadn't been to camp in some 30 years when he spent two wonderful days visiting during the summer of 2006. He loved seeing at all again and spoke eloquently of the values he learned during his time. During his visit I told a late-night story (to a village) into which I somehow weaved Mark Kramer--and then revealed, at the end of the telling, that the very same Mark Kramer was sitting right here, whereupon Mark scarily stood up and introduced himself, nearing sending the kids out of their skins. Here was this guy, from way in the past, right there once again. Mark has since been very supportive of our campaign to raise funds for the new Wellness Center, and I'm personally grateful to him for his continued interest.

Milton's emotional return

I mentioned earlier that Milton Pittman (camper & staff, 1982-1990) visited camp this past weekend. On Sunday during check-in for session 4, Milt, wearing one of our bright yellow alumni volunteer shirts, stationed himself near the entrance to the dining hall and offered kindly welcoming words to parents and arriving campers, directed them to the check-in tables and did his winning jokin' thing. I watched this with amazement and nostalgia, recalling Milt's magnetic sociability and his great deep warm voice. Earlier during the holdover weekend we'd had a chance to go to Phoenicia for dinner--and got caught up on the long years. Sunday morning Bill Abbott insisted that we have our early-morning coffee at the observatory--way up the hill near where (for oldtimers reading this) the old rifle range used to be. It was a gorgeous morning--warm and sunny--and we had an amazing view of the sun coming up over Wildcat.

Later I chatted with Milt and here is the audio recording, complete with two classic Milt-UN tales. One story has to do with his time as bus coordinator, the other about his very first interaction with me in '82 when he was a camper called up to perform as Challenge Night.

It was clearly a great weekend for Milt and here is part of what he wrote me when he got back home (he begins by referring to my daughter Hannah, my all-summer Sacky camper, who, on break between sessions, joined us for various holdover-weekend activities):

It was a pleasure to meet her, and seeing you around her, I can tell that you are a really proud man. When I bought her ice cream Saturday.. I was saying to myself, Wow! I cannot believe I just bought Al’s kid ice cream.. I’m still beaming about that. I also have to tell you that volunteering at FV made me feel fantastic… It totally rekindled the old FV fire that I new was somewhere inside me. After all of the years being away from FV, I am glad that the fire has been restarted.. Especially thanks to you and brotha B[ill Abbott]. I’m going to try and get the word out to alumni that I am in touch with. If any one is on the fence about volunteering, don’t even think about it just come up and DO IT! You will feel GREAT about yourself, and the fact that you are up at the VALLEY again. The kids, the sounds, and the whole atmosphere up there will rejuvenate you, and make you feel ten years younger. I will not be a stranger, and thanks again for welcoming me back to the home I call Frost Valley…

Here's to Milt's return!

hey cuz

I'm not sure why Bill Abbott and I call each other "cuz." Bill, whose mind is a like a trap for such details, can tell us. I suspect it comes from Kangaroo Court. At a certain point, once Dave King retired (he was always "da Judge"--as in "Here comes da judge!") I was promoted to ye presider over the court, having been a perfectly maladroit defense attorney for some years, and whipped-cream-pie set-up man earlier. So when I was Judge Bill Abbott was at least once the Prosecuting Attorney. In the custom of that all-camp evening program, it had to become clear that the judge and prosecutor were in cahoots--that, in short, the defendent, some hapless staff member or camper, didn't have a chance of justice. Probably Bill and I made this point clear by referring to each other as cousins. "Hey there, cuz!" said the Judge to the Prosecutor. "Well, howdy cuz!" was the Prosecutor's smirking rejoinder, adding a slap on the back. When I was the VC of Thunderbird village in 1974 (the village existed for one week, ever) Bill was my camper, at 10 years old. Later he became one of my counselors and a VC. Now he's a colleague on the Trustees. Time flies...and also doesn't. For one of the periodic alumni updates, sent to our listserv in the summer of 2006, Bill wrote:

I was a camper from '70 - '79 and a counselor from '80 - '84. I took many Adventure trips through FV, including the Adirondacks excursion with Sue Moriarity as our leader and the Rainer cross country trip with Mike Larison (now FV's forester!) as our leader! My brother and sister, Ken and Ann, were also campers and staff members. We found FV through the Summit YMCA. I'm now a banker working and living in Manhattan and serve on the Alumni Association as well as the Board of Trustees. Ken and Ann both live in Bozeman, MT. Ken is a subcontractor for a painting contractor there and ANN works for a child welfare agency. Ken has a little girl named Karen Leigh, eight years old, and Ann has two girls; Price now 20 and Morgan now 15!

The picture at the top of this entry was taken in April of 2007. I took my Penn students camping overnight at Banks Hill (that's a long story--never mind why) and Bill happened to be in camp. So he came up to the camp site (as did John Giannotti) and told my students a few stories. Afterward, they looked at me and said, "Who was that guy?" And by the way: how the generations and the networks converge--the young woman to the far right in the pic, wearing the green sweatshirt, is Ellie Kane, my student and advisee at Penn and also now in her second summer as FV counselor. She loves it. To the left here is a photo of Bill on the last day of the summer of '84. Click the image to see some more '84 pics.

Well, Bill's seen this entry and adds the following Abbottesque narrative curlicue:

I can confirm that the origin of the use of the term Cuz indeed came out of our wonderful Kangaroo Court evening activities! As a camper, I always loved Kangaroo Court nights. The whole affair was hysterical! I'll never forget when poor Maurice Penn, my counselor in cabin 15 in old Outpost, was accused and convicted of yelling "It's great to be alive" in spontaneous outbursts! Maurice would yell this at the top of his lungs from our cabin's porch on beautiful mornings and by the end of our first session in Outpost the whole cabin would join him! And once we got the hang of it we'd do it all day long when we were having fun, which was pretty much all the time! (The cabin had some great kids in it - my brother was there as well as David Lovice and John Bear to mention just a few. It was also the summer that Rick and Mike Cobb taught me lacrosse, a sport I continued to play right on through college!).

As a counselor, it was a career highlight (up there with reprising the Hettler Brothers' [Bill and Bobby] "Russian Midget" routine with my brother Ken!) to act as the prosecuting attorney with Hanging Judge Filgrits as the presiding Magistrate! Having done the bumbling defense attorney once or twice, it was great to be on the other end of a cream pie in the face! I remember that we'd hold off calling each other "cousin" until we'd convict a kid or counselor or two. Then we'd start calling each other "Cuz" and asking about "how your uncle's doing" and such. Once the audience understood that "these guys are related" it knew there was no hope for any "suspects" to get a fair trial! Even now, whenever I hear the term "kangaroo court", I always think of those hilarious evenings at Frost Valley!

And this guy's a banker, so I think he needs to stop thinking about pies in the face and get back to work.

staff list for "The Hird" 1985

Here (click on the image for a larger version) is the beginning-of-summer staff list for "The Hird" in July of 1985. The roster changed a bit as the summer went on, but only a bit. It was a superb staff--the best group of VCs I ever directed. I believe this was the first summer of PAC, possibly the second--only called "Quinnipiac" at the start of the summer. Notice that there were just two staff there--Dave Gold and "Flash" Gordon--for all those boys in Hird Lodge. What's odd-seeming is that Hemlock's sister village, Sacajewea ("Sacky"), is not here. It's not that Sacky was in Wawayanda that summer; Sacky was in The Hird, run by Wendy Brady, but not until session 2. (Session 1 that summer had low enrollments. Sacky's staff was spread throughout other villages.) Lenape matched with Tacoma and Pac with Windsong (also new--it has been "Sunburst" before that and "Cherokee" before that). Note too that in 1983 Lenape lived in what had been for many years the home of that village--cabins 16-20 (currently numbered 13-17 and currently the home of Hemlock), but in this year, '85, we moved Lenape over to where Tacoma had always been, cabins 46-50, atop "the Hill," so that all of the Hird could be together on that side of camp. Tacoma now moved into 31-35 where Pokey had been and Sacky was where Susky had always been (36-40), while Hemlock was with Lenape on the Hill, in 41-45. All this moving around was made necessary, or made possible at least, by the destruction of the main "boys" dining hall by fire on New Year's Eve 1982. I'll save that story for another post, but gosh, my memory of all this detail scares me; looking at this mimeographed staff list of a group of good young people 23 years ago, it all seems ridiculously clear. I note finally this was also the first summer of "The Hird" as such, after "Camp Henry Hird" or "Camp Hird." We were a herd...for sure.