fun run

Almost every late afternoon in the early 80s we had a "fun run." Anyone - camper or staff - could run along the circular road around the main fields, and many did. At whatever pace. Here we see Mike Ketcham finished his run (Mike was quite a good distance runner) and Dawn Helfand, who was either a VC, CIT Director or Camp Director that summer. After a few years of this, by the way, we'd set up music in front of Margetts Lodge and play loud upbeat rhythmic music as people ran. I think we also served snacks, like fruit and maybe some sort of water-ice thingy.

By this point Mike Ketcham was our first full-year Director of Camping, a position that has remained pretty much the same since Mike first accepted the job in (I'm guessing here) 1979.

Mike's family - the Ketchams of Westfield, NJ - were Wawayanda and Frost Valley mainstays. Two brothers and I believe three sisters - all worked here at some point. When their father Frank passed away (also a key figure in the Westfield Y) the family got together and donated the chapel at Reflection Pond, named after Frank: The Ketcham Family Chapel. I think Mike's first Wawayanda summer was in 1949: family camp at the old Wawayanda.

one of the very first nurses; the first nurse for Hird

Sad news from Dave & Shirley King tells us of the passing of our beloved nurse from 1959 through the 1960s, Jerry Lester. Here is what they write:

Geraldine B. Lester, camp nurse for Camps Wawayanda and Floyd, died today at 3am in Little Rock Arkansas.

Gerry came to Camp Wawayanda at Frost Valley in 1959. She,along with her husband Don and sons Kevin,Danny,and Tommy, lived and worked in the small building next to the fly fishing shack which we labeled the "Dispensary". Don, an exexcutive with the Brown&Williamson Tobacco Company, worked in New York City during the week, and came to camp on Friday night for the weekend.Gerry and her family were part of the development of Frost Valley for the entire decade of the 1960's.

The job of camp nurse during that time period was crucial. Our nearest medical Doctor was Dr. Tompkins whose office was in Liberty, 26 miles away.Dr. Tompkins would visit camp twice weekly. Liberty-Loomis Hospital was located near Ellenville even farther away. In every sense of the term ,Gerry was a"nurse practitioner" who had to make tough/sometimes critical decisions on a daily basis.

Gerry was also the first camp nurse for Camp Hird which added to the load that she carried so very well.It is probably hard for present era staff members to conceptualize the camp evnvironment without a complete medical staff and facilities.This concept just illustrates how good and competent and effective Gerry was.

Beside the medical competency, Jerry and Don were "Camp People". Al calls us "Lifers". Don, on weekends, would load and unload baggage, drive the camp truck"the green rat" for all kinds of necessities, or the camp station wagon for town runs. He was also always available to talk to counselors or to tell stories, and he attended camp activities with his sons.

Shirley and I became very close friends with Gerry and Don, and we and our families had Thanksgiving Dinner together for 17 years. We gathered in New Brunswick,NJ, Baltimore,MD, and in Louisville,KY. We also travelled to Harpers Ferry VA, Annapolis MD,and Bound Brook, NJ where Don umpired a Little League World Series tournament game. Our kids did grow up together as a family, and, in those days,there were very few "camp families". The Camp Directors, the maintenance Director, the Program Director, and the cooks might have a family with them. There were few women in camp then and they did create lifelong bonds.

After Frost Valley, Gerry worked with geriatrics in a nursing home environment. She and Don visited Europe and stayed for seven years, before fully retiring in Little Rock Arkansas.

It is very poignant for Shirl and Me to lose her during Thanksgiving Week. In our estimation, she belongs in the Frost Valley Hall of fame!

fun run

Before a "fun run" for staff, in the late 1970s, stretching in front of Margetts Lodge.

on The Today Show

On Saturday Frost Valley was featured in a 2-minute Today Show segment on camp hygiene. Click on the image above and watch. Thanks to Ken Nathanson for providing the recording.

Joy White Nurse's Room formally dedicated

At the recent formal dedication and opening of the new Wellness Center, we also formally named the busy central nurse's room after the late Joy White. This is a promise we made--friends of Joy--years ago and what a pleasure it was finally to honor her in such a fabulous new facility. She would have loved it. We know already from the summer's experience how vital and lively that room is.

John Giannotti did a portrait of Joy in oil - based on a photo her daughters sent him - and this portrait hangs in the main hallway just outside the nurse's room. At the dedication, as visitors toured the building, they saw the portrait, newly hung, along with a one-page description. Here is the text of that page:

The Joy White Nurses Station

Dedicated in loving memory to Joy White, who served as Camp Nurse for nearly two decades.

Joy and her husband Chuck moved to Frost Valley in 1973, and lived in the grey house across from the maintenance buildings and the fly-fishing pond later named for Chuck. They and their four children – Liz, Rebecca, David and Sylvia – became one of a small group of resident families that were key to the rapid development of Frost Valley in the 1970s and 80s.

Joy’s unique contribution was to the emergence of the Wellness philosophy. She led the way in implementing activities that put an abstract concept into practice: sweetly yet insistently, she taught campers and staff the importance of eating well, relaxation, staying away from cigarettes and drugs, and overall healthful self-awareness. Known in every corner of camp for her boundless “TLC,” Joy White shared her love and concern with all those around her. With wit and great medical wisdom she cared for thousands of campers, school children, and staff for many years.

Hundreds of alumni – staff, families, schoolteachers, conference group leaders, and campers whom she cared for so well - have contributed to Frost Valley’s capital campaign in memory of Joy and of the true joy she brought to this place.

About the Artist: John Giannotti served as a staff member at Frost Valley in a variety of positions from the late '60s to the mid-80s. During that time he was Chair of the Department of Art at the Camden campus of Rutgers University. His paintings and sculptures have been exhibited throughout the US and in many countries around the world. His monumental bronze sculptures of Walt Whitman and Madame Curie stand in sculpture parks at Soka University in Japan. John is most grateful for the sense of community and integrity that Frost Valley instilled in his three children, Oran, Keara and Danielle, while they were "camp brats," campers, and later as staff members. Their love of Frost Valley became an integral part of how they have conducted their lives. John now lives in Haddonfield, NJ, with his wife Toni Vielehr and their son Delano.

I'll have more to say about the Wellness Center dedication in the coming days. I took some photos and made some audio recordings, so stay tuned.

archiving with Windsong

One of the counselors in Windsong - Anna Armstrong, who herself has been here for years beginning as a young camper - organized a double-period session with me yesterday here in the Historical Room of the Ad Office. We gathered her and I described what was in the Frost Valley/Wawayanda archive, a deep closet now very very well organized with file drawers, archive boxes, deeds and meeting minutes and annual reports, photos, old issues of The Wawayanda Whirlwind and the Wawayanda Wasp and Frost Valley Life, staff lists and even camper lists for early years.

Carefully recording the files removed, we handed our archive folders to each of the girls who wanted to read them. Others sorted through old staff shirts dating back to the 1960s, others read through the 1979-1980 Staff Wellness Manual with the idea of comparing our ideas about health and wellness now with these revolutionary ideas of the late 70s, and still another group sat my computer and tried to Google the names of campers from the 1968 camper lists, seeing if we could locate any. (We did!)

Melanie Vargas took notes on wellness then and now. She wrote this, in part: "No TCS. No Too Cool Syndrome. No camper should be 'too cool' for any activity. This creates a stress-free environment. This makes FV the true melting pot America is supposed to be. The country itself may only be the ingredients but Frost Valley is the real melting pot where the flavors blend to become the tempting stew. From Building Wellness Lifestyle page 4, paragraph 1, line 2, I read: 'Learn more from what we do than from what we say.' Recently a counselor said to me, "Youdon't realize what an effect you have on us." Just yesterday I learned about Sunshine Village [a one-week village of kids undergoing drug rehab]. It's meant to show those just out of rehab what else there is, what opportunities they have. Having attended FV myself since 10 years old I've been exposed to those opportunities. I'd never have been so liberal, open-minded, or cultured without this place. Here we're away from the judgments and harsh cruelty of society. In a few short weeks here we lose our own judgments and gossip doesn't change our opinions. First impressions don't matter. All campers gain courage and confidence."

During our session our CEO Jerry Huncosky stopped in to talk with the girls. One of the girls was reading through a long-range planning document that called for the replacement of all cabins with lodges, one super-lodge for each existing village of five cabins. She asked Jerry his view of the cabins vs. the lodges. Before he describe his preference (strongly for the cabins) the girls discussed it with them. All but one preferred the cabins. Later Georgia Gleason wrote about this: "Campers at Frost Valley who have lived in lodges and cabins usually have an opinion about which they prefer.... It's cool in the cabins to look at all the names and dates carved in the walls. Thinking about all the different girls and boys who slept in the bunks long ago is interesting to dream about. Cabins provide 8 individuals the same age an opportunity to bond and grow very close to each other. Lodges on the other hand hold more people and allow everyone to be part of a bigger family. Lodges such as Kresge [where Windsong lives] are really great because they have a main room in the center where the girls meet to hang out and say goodnight. Wherever you stay at Frost Valley there will be fun things to do, great times to experience, and the most fun, cool and exciting people on earth."

Tammy Oruwariye became fascinated with a document dated 1966. The "Construction Engineers" (CE) program had not gone well the previous summer apparently. "Bad leadership" was the complaint and the situation was presented to the trustee-led "Wawayanda Committee," which recommended at one of its fall meetings that the CE Program be discontinued. Tammy asked me what the CE program was and why it was shut down and she wanted to imagine what overnight camping and hiking would be like today if the trails and lean-tos and overnight sites had been kept up by camper volunteers in CE all those summers. She first wrote about her own overnight experiences. Then: "Imagine if we had the CEs now. It would make hiking so much better and easier." The end of the CEs, she wrote, "remains a mystery in my mind." What did she mean by this, I asked her later. "It seems like such a good idea. Maybe we can do something like this again."

Sherley Wetherheld was another who read the Wellness Lifestyles manual and it got her to thinking about her own time here. "As a Windsong camper (the equivalent of Cherokee Village, for those of you who remember playing 45s of the Beatles and the Doors), my last days as a camper loom darkly and inevitable. I have done quite a big of thinking lately. What will I say at Vespers? How have I made my mark on Frost Valley? Will I make CIT? How will my life be changed? I can try to answer one question: What is the allure and magic of Frost Valley? It's the feel-goodness that surrounds us every time we set foot on Frost Valley property. While flipping through "Building Wellness Lifestyles" I realized that all of the ideals Frost Valley stood for in the 70s still hold true in the 21st century. Here's the conclusion of the old booklet: We hope all of us will agree that after spending the summer together that wellness was never intended to be boring coursework, putting people down, getting everyone to behave the same way, a program for super-jocks, or a drag. It is intended to be health enhancing, enlivening, inspiring, and to make us feel good inside. Which is exactly what Frost Valley does for me. It makes me feel good. The way we all share our secrets and keep them too, the way we become a family, but closer, and know that we will always be friends, and in our hearts, we'll always be campers, and know where to find some of that Frost Valley magic."

I had a centennial year staff T-shirt to give away to one of the Windsong kids at the end of the program but they were all so into this exploration into their camp's history it didn't seem appropriate to single out one kid, but everyone instantly agreed that Anna Armstrong, the counselor who came up with this idea, should have it. She was delighted and wore it the rest of the day. It turns out that today, the next day, she was leaving camp for the summer (needing to go back to college a bit early). So this was a fine farewell gathering, some reflection, some connecting to the larger community here, and a new shirt to prove it. The girls applauded her when she showed them her new FV possession.

alumna nurse here now

Marianne Black (now Marianne Norelli) is here working in the new Wellness Center as a nurse. The networking must be doing its job. Here's Marianne:

"I was a camper/CIT in 1975, 76 and 77. Both of my daughters are at camp this year Rachel is in Tacoma (her 4th summer) and Juliet is in Lakota (her 1st summer), my other daughter Cara did not attend this year since she is travelling. I am also working as an RN at the new Health Center. Staying at Frost Valley has brought back many memories and I was looking forward to coming "back to camp" for the 2 weeks. As always the girls are having a great time and are always busy. The new health center is beautiful, I do not know how the nurses handled so many kids the summers before. I have some old FV books incase you want to post any old photos."

new home for dialysis nearly ready

Regular readers of this web log (did you know that the term "blog" is a contraction of "web blog"?) will know perhaps more than they want to about the new health/wellness center. The lower floor (where Arts & Crafts will be housed, as well as a 150-seat theater with stage, curtain, video display equipment, a backstage, etc.) is not ready and won't be until September--and not until next summer for summer campers. The upper floor is divided into two sections roughly, the southernmost two-thirds is the health center and on the northern end of the building is the dialysis/renal center. The health center has been open since the beginning of the summer and is functioning beautifully. This has to be seen to be believed. How much simpler it is for kids and counselors who take medications to get them, get the attention they need--not to mention how relatively nice it is for kids feeling ill to wait comfortably in the (ahem....) Alumni Reception Room.

The dialysis center is very nearly ready to be opened. So far--two full sessions and the first few days of a third--the dialysis program is operating out of the old facility, the extension Chuck White built onto the back of Smith Lodge. The moment the furniture is in and health officials from the State of New York has given their final complex approvals (that's the slow part), Maureen (our fabulous coordinator of the unit) and her staff will move up to the new building.

One of these photos shows you the bathroom in the middle of the large main dialysis room. With a genial campy sense of humor the architects and Jerry Huncosky designed this bathroom superficially resemble on old camp outhouse. Like it? I do.

The other photo is of Rick Kaskel standing in the same room, deliberately looking forlorn and lonely (hoping for furniture to be delivered soon). Blog fans will know Rick, a prominent nephrologist (kidney doctor) who has been associated with our program since the late 70s. Rick will be spending his annual turn as dialysis camp doctor next week. Come on home, Rick!

wellness revolution

Since this summer we're inaugurating a big beautiful new Wellness Center, it seemed apt to dig back into the history of the Wellness Revolution, which took place from around 1976 through 1981 or so. In '77 and '78 in particular, it seemed that every thing we did, said, touched, trained and progammed was wellness, wellness, wellness. It was such a huge change, and bred such natural resistance among the campers and staff (and to some degree camper parents also), that I suppose it could never have happened had it not been so forcefully and relentlessly implemented. Had it not felt to many to be a rejection of beloved customs and the general spirit of the place (what-the-heck fun, a certain spirited recklessness, a non-PC approach to giving kids a good time), it would have seemed too obvious to fuss about. After all, the idea was simple: camp should be a place where kids have lots of healthy options; where they can get away from the Junk Food, Couch Potato World out there.

Several effective and well-meaning zealots were empowered by our Exec Director, Halbe Brown, to make this happen, and several mild-mannered good-health-above-all types, such as the beloved Mike Ketcham, continued in their genial ways but felt emboldened by the zealots, made it all happen. And fast. Cigarette smokers on the staff were confined to a small space. Soda, candy and ice cream served for many years in the canteen were gone. And the after-dinner "canteen" (long lines visiting the camp store on the end of Hayden Lodge) was eliminated, which, since it was a hang-out hour for both camps, felt like a huge loss to everyone. It was our free period after dinner and the only time in those days that Boys' and Girls' Camp could casually get together. Sugar was removed from the dining hall tables.

And staff training was completely redone. I might be misremembering, but I believe that in '78 at least 50% of the week-long staff training was on topics and programs related to Wellness. That's a lot!

The iamge here is a scan of the cover design for the 1978 Counselor's Manual. Oh that design! It was on the manual, on t-shirts, on brochures... everywhere. The people were (ironically) drawn as pudgy generic figures, skin color quite diverse (more diverse than the actual people on staff, though we were trying) and rainbows always in the background (just in case you didn't get the idea).

By '81 or '82 we'd moderated the emphasis a bit, but the change had been made and Frost Valley as a whole - not just summer camp - is much better for it.

Now the challenge is: We have an fine new Wellness Center, which we're formally dedicating on September 13, so we need to re-focus on some of the old Wellness questions. I don't mean health and medical ones (content ones)--although these are also of crucial importance--so much as institutional-political ones: what is the tone with which we want to be wellness "back"? There are many many possibilities among the options.

At the 2006 Labor Day reunion Dari Litchman (a wonderfully design-conscious person) thought to base the reunion T-shirt on this by-then outdated late '70s design. It was hilarious and everyone loved the retro look. How funny (well, not funny, but you fill in the word) that wellness could have become retro! It's then, it's now.

Above: the new Guenther Wellness Center (to the left of the Brown pavillion) as you see it from the lower field. I was standing in front of the Ad Office when I snapped this shot yesterday. The building is up on the hill about 200 feet to the southwest of the dining hall. You can see it's landscaped already, grass growing, and it blends into the hillside well. I'll have more photos of the building later.

thank you, Hunter

Buildings at FV don't get built by themselves, of course. But most of us have always just exclaimed ("new building!") and then figured out how to use it for the benefit of the kids and families who love to visit our valley. Although FV is a non-profit organization, the capital (one-time expenses, not in the operating budget) needed to do any construction or renovation must be found. For the Mitchell Conference complex (Geyer Hall, the renovated former girls' dining hall; Lakeview Lodge) and the new Wellness Center, we went into a capital campaign. Lots and lots of folks were involved. Two major gifts of $1 million each were pledged by Paul Guenther (wellness center) and Helen Geyer (Mitchell buildings) but hundreds of others gave smaller yet significant amounts, including many alumni (I'm proud to say). The fellow who co-chaired and led this campaign on the Trustees side was the remarkable Hunter Corbin, one of the kindest and most thoughtful--and most effective--people you'll ever meet. At the recent at-FV meeting of the Board of Trustees, trustees and staff gathered in the Day Room of the dining hall before lunch one day and thanked Hunter, presented him with a plaque...and Jerry Huncosky announced that the new road leading behind the Group Home (gray house that used to be the Devlins' and then Whites' residence) up to some new staff houses would be named in Hunter's honor: Hunter Lane.

Thank you, Hunter! Every child who has a fever or a sprained ankle this summer might well thank you too, as he or she sits in a beautiful comfortable spacious and friendly waiting room and can get some nursing TLC in a real treatment room. The digs are so good that one imagines campers will want to stay overnight rather than tramp back in the dark and cold rain up to a sandy-floored old cabin on the hill! Oh well.

tour the wellness center under construction

Our amazing CEO, Jerry Huncosky, knows every foot of this project. I joined him recently on a tour of the construction site. A family group - the Wood family - has been visiting during the same mid-January weekend for some 35 years, always staying on the second floor of the Castle; they expressed interest in seeing the building, and Jerry happily obliged. Here's a video that will give you a good sense of the building - although it's a just a brief excerpt.

The ribbon-cutting and dedication of the building will take place in September, but there's some reasonable hope that the building will be open in June, in time for summer camp. I'm hoping, but not holding my breath.

progress and snow

The new wellness center, under construction, in a photo taken three days ago.

new wellness center

The extraordinary new Wellness Center is scheduled to be finished before the summer of '08 - if the weather cooperates and there aren't any surprises in the phases of construction. The top floor is on the same level as the dining hall. The building is being built at the edge of the flat one flat up from the main field along the bottom of the valley - so that it's bottom floor, built into the hill and looking out across the lower flat toward Wildcat, will almost meet the level of the lower flat. In other words, you'll be able to enter the building from the lower field; or, for the health and infirmary (and dialysis) facilities, you'll enter from nearby the dining hall.

The main reception room on the upper level is named "The Alumni Reception Room." It will be a comfy, inviting waiting room. Just off the Alumni room will be the main nurse's office, and this is being named in memory of Joy White, who always craved a nice and big-enough space in which to dispense TLC.

The lower level will include a gorgeous new theatre - with bench-like tiered seating, a real stage, a real backstage area.... Very exciting. (We've never had this. The closest we came was years ago, when the lower floor of the girls' dining hall - now Geyer Hall - was called Conover English Hall and at the far end of it was built a stage, with a curtain, etc. But we haven't had that set up since the early 70s.)

The whole building is being named in honor of Paul Guenther, long-time chairman of the FV Board and for years an advocate of the idea that we urgently needed a new health facility.

Below are photographs taken in the past few days:




Here (below) is a photo of the construction site as seen from the dining hall area (on September 15):

artist among us

When Halbe Brown, with help from Bill Hettler, Mike Ketcham, Joy White and others, led the Wellness Revolution in the late 1970s, he turned to Bob Allen to help as a consultant. Bob helped us understand how to change our brand without altering what we fundamentally were, and how to communicate our new emphasis on healthy eating, cooperative games and a staff training that focused on the larger matters of "the whole child" in his or her generally unhealthy world. Well, the story of that huge change--it's a story that includes tales of resistance as well as triumph--is for another time.

Judd Allen and Peter Allen, Bob's sons, came to camp as the result of Bob's involvement. Both were counselors. I believe Peter recently had his own kids in camp, as recently as last year (perhaps in '07 as well).

Now Peter is a sculptor and painter and I'm pleased to provide this link to his site. "Over the past two decades," Peter writes, "I have cast aluminum and bronze and used natural fieldstone and locally harvested wood to create rather large sculptures. I also do welded sculpture requiring me to scour the bins of the steel salvage center in Dover, NJ and elsewhere to attempt to uncover treasures for my future works. I also add steel to the aluminum, wood or stone in order to weld together stones and wood limbs and disparate metals into an integrated whole. This work as a 'Hunter-gatherer' paves the way to the 'reader' of my work being invited to slow down their cerebral fast-pitched days and look for innovative combinations and dual uses of overlooked objects."