the cheer that was supposed to be tamped down

This link here should take you to a Facebook video that will truly tickle you. It's based on an audio recording made in 1993. You'll hear the voices of Forest counselors griping hilariously about having been told by directors to stop chanting a certain village cheer: "Twenty-Three." Just watch and you'll get it. Charming video made by Dave Scherer. I'm not certain that non-Facebook users can use the link, but perhaps so. I'm not up on video-sharing protocols and whatnot. Give it a try and let me know.

Here is what Dave wrote when he uploaded this to Facebook about a year ago: "In 1993 I was a camp counselor at the Frost Valley summer camp. Last week I started listening to some of the tapes I made that summer in my car. This video is actually a 2 minute sound sample with text. It tells the epic ongoing story of Frost Valley and similar places worldwide. / Credits: Forest VC Fred Biggs, Apolllo Bey, Jon Lockwood, Leon Greene, me and countless campers."

final '09 hoopla

radio Dave

David Scherer ("Radio Dave") is up to something on YouTube - something about some sort of somewhat unkosher project he undertook in Forest one summer - but I can't quite say what it is. Anyway, here is is, Dave's video, on YouTube: link.

the Wawayanda spirit, it never does die

Max Geiser in the dining hall with his MAC kids, last day of session 1, summer 2007.

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."

videos: Pokey-Totem cheer & Susky too

Seen and heard your Pokey-Totem cheer for the day? No? Well your day's not complete without it, so click on this link and see a video of what will for many be a familiar cheer--recorded during the current (4th) session at camp. The cheer is called "Bang Bang Choo Choo Train."

Now let's leave the dining hall and watch Susky in the Big Tree Field perform their favorite cheer: here's your link.

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.

an Outpost cheer

If you click here you will see a video recording of a cheer chanted by Outpost village just a few days ago. Note that Outpost's sister village (Lakota - between Susky and Sacky in age) cheers along with Outpost during "hoopla" after lunch. The brother and sister villages typically memorize each other's cheers; indeed, often when a village begins one of its cheers, the entire dining hall shouts in comradeship. It's quite something to behold.

the old Boys Dining Hall

To the left here, the old "Boys Dining Hall" (properly Thomas Dining Hall or Thomas Lodge, named for Emerson Thomas or "Em") as it stood in 1961. Mike DeVita, who with his brother (and I believe sister too) was there in the early years of Wawayanda at Frost Valley, sent me this snapshot and three others. You can see these here. The dining hall, especially from this angle (coming up the hill from what the old Rec Hall, now Margetts Lodge), doesn't look like much, but everyone who ate and sang and cheered there recalls its elegance and capaciousness. Its acoustics were somehow 5 times better than those of the current dining hall, which is fabulous in almost every other way. There was a silver-colored metal fireplace hood suspended from the ceiling in the very center of the main dining room; below it a round stone fireplace. Rows of five tables for each village were spread out across two wings, one east-facing and the other north-facing. Especially at night--for instance, on story night or during a rainy-night closing campfire--the place had a look and feel of a modernist cathedral. This building burned to the ground on the last night of 1982. Photos of the fire and its story....for another post, another time. Meantime, there's this true tale: Mike Marder, when he learned that the real name of the building was "Thomas Dining Hall," asked: "What's the matter? Didn't Mr. Boys make a big enough donation?"