Sorry for the iPhone picture--low quality, no zoom. Dave Mager took some photos too with one of his super-fabulous cameras, so perhaps soon I'll have some better ones to post.This was last night, at the Newark Club. Frost Valley's annual dinner. We inducted two new members into the now two-year-old Frost Valley Hall of Fame: Helen Geyer and Jim Kellogg. (The photo shows Helen at the podium responding to the honor.)
Among the alumni present: Mike Marder, Sue Ettelman Eisenhower, John Butler, Lauren LaMauro, Mark Showers, Bill Abbott (trustee), Roger Leon (who was also the keynote speaker), Lisa Ernst (also our Development Director), Nicky Rinklin.
Here's a profile of Helen Geyer:
She is widely known and admired for her work as a film and television actress and as a model, and for her innumerable appearances on magazine covers. She is also widely known and cherished for her many years of volunteer work and civic leadership in Montclair, New Jersey—with the Montclair Art Museum, the Garden Club, the Presby Memorial Iris Garden, and of course the Helen & Bill Geyer YMCA of Montclair Family Center. We honor Helen Geyer tonight for these and other achievements, but to members of her Frost Valley family she is and will always be known and respected first and foremost for her devoted service as the first-ever womanAnd here is a profile of Jim Kellogg:on the Frost Valley YMCA Board of Trustees. Helen had been introduced to Wawayanda by her late husband Bill at around the time of the breakthrough that has been said to have been the single most important factor in preventing the then-62-year-old camp’s financial failure and irrelevance: the long overdue admission of girls to a new “Camp Wawayanda for Girls,” the building of the cluster of lodges, cabins and dining hall that came to be known as Camp Henry Hird. Forty-five years later, when Frost Valley again faced a turning point, a campaign commenced to revitalize and create a new core around those same buildings, it was appropriate that Helen Geyer was the first to step up and show support. Her contribution to this effort culminated in the naming of the former Girls’ Dining Hall—once renovated, it became the centerpiece of the project—after one of Frost Valley’s true pioneers: Geyer Hall. When all is said and done, family is Helen Geyer’s primary motivation for her decade of service; Helen often says that she and Bill have always thought of their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren together as “a YMCA family.” Tonight indeed we honor…a great YMCA family.
In the era of priority-shifting, ceaselessly reorganizing, moving-target nonprofit boards, Jim Kellogg’s steadfastness, focused commitment, and deep sense of the volunteer’s honor shone like a beacon across the national landscape; and thus Frost Valley shone too. Jim served as a member of Frost Valley’s Board of Trustees for three decades and for fifteen of those years was our Board President, succeeding WoodyEnglish. The two together can be said without exaggeration to have provided a vision of continuity unparalleled in camping. Not coincidentally this was the period in which Frost Valley’s summer camp program solidified its roots and re-attained greatness, the environmental education program was created, the conference program rose to a level of size and prominence that just two or three other camps attained, financial aid was awarded to needy families, international partnerships were constituted, and disabled children were mainstreamed into the camp without hesitation or blink of an institutional eye. Jim provided leadership when Frost Valley had to effect an efficient, never-look-back recovery from disaster by fire. Always looking problems and challenges straight on, Jim saw obstacles as opportunities, adhering without fanfare but firmly to the two-word version of Frost Valley’s mission: “Build Strong.” His service to Frost Valley has been part of a larger context of volunteer leadership and civic engagement. He has been the President of the Community Foundation of New Jersey, a member of the Bloomfield College Board of Trustees, President of the Children’s Specialized Hospital of Mountainside, and President of the J. C. Kellogg Foundation. Jim Kellogg’s distinguished career demonstrates an unmatched generosity of commitment to public service, eloquently bespeaking this core tenet: we must invest in others, so that everyone, regardless of economic background or circumstances, has the resources necessary to maximize his or her potential. Jim Kellogg truly does build strong, and when we honor him tonight we honor our most basic reason for being as an organization.
