staff training 2012 & Jenna Ostrow is here

Day 4 of summer staff training 2012 and it happens that alumna Jena Ostrow is here with a small group on a retreat. Not a very good pic of us in the dining at lunch yesterday, but at least you get a sense she is here. Not sure she realized that her retreat would coincide with staff training but she says that it has made her return to FV all the sweeter: watching these young people go through training brings back very specific memories (for her as for me).

'Should I Be Sending My Children to Camp?'

In a recent article, Michael Thompson writes:

I know that many young people do not really know how strong they are, how competent they are or even who they are until they get away from their parents and test themselves in a new and challenging environment. Many children told me the best thing about camp was, "I can really be myself here." What do they mean by that? I am pretty sure I know the answer. When children are away from their parents, they do not have to view their own life and achievements through the lens of my-athlete-father-standing-on-the-sidelines-watching-me or my-mother-is-worried-that-I'll fail. When a child is on his own, the experience is his alone, the satisfaction belongs only to him and he does not have to filter it through what his parents think and feel.

For the whole article: LINK.

your 2012 staff!

The summer camp staff arrived yesterday! They're not all at FV quite yet, and not everyone is in this picture, but you get a sense of the size - and even, though from this distance, the enthusiasm and rarin'-to-go-ness - of your 2012 FV staff!

lax stars got their start at Frost Valley

Rick Cobb writes: "I was in Montclair this weekend for hte 50th anniversary of the lacrosse program (1962-2012), and saw a couple of alumni who I taught to play lacrosse at FV.  On the left is John Dudley, who went on to play lax at Navy, and now coaches a scholastic lax team in Newark.  On the right is Ross Wimer, oldest of four brothers who all ended up playing lax at Montclair (or Cherry Creek HS in CO after they moved), and all played at Yale.  Just goes to show you never know how the seeds planted at FV will grow."

last chance to have your name inscribed in the Alumni Cabin in our new CIT Lodge

Dear Frost Valley alumni friends:

Our new home for the CITs is nearly finished. In less than a month, our 2012 CITs will arrive and move in and start their life-changing adventure at Frost Valley.

Very soon (within days) we will be shifting our focus as alumni back to helping FV fund "camperships" (financial aid scholarships for kids to attend camp whose families can't otherwise afford it) - an annual campaign known in recent years as "Project 332" (because our goal is sending 332 campership kids to camp).

But now I'm writing to say that this is your last opportunity to join many, many former CITs and others to have your name (and CIT summer, if you want) included in the "Alumni Cabin," one of the cabins that form the new Leadership Lodge.

If you go here

http://frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits

and make a donation of any size, we will add your name to the walls of Alumni Cabin. In a few weeks a new generation of CITs will join our community - they'll see your name and will know they follow a special tradition.

See below for a copy of the message I (with Jeff Daly and Dan Weir) sent to you at the beginning of this project. We're coming all the way back from the devastation of Hurricane Irene, and now we'll be better than ever.

Click on this link and you'll see the list of alumni whose names will be on the wall, as of a few days ago:

http://media.sas.upenn.edu/afilreis/leadership-lodge-May2012.jpg

- Al

Al Filreis
http://writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis

- - -

Dear Frost Valley alumni, one & all:

We are writing to many, many former Frost Valley campers, trip leaders, directors, program staff, counselors, environmental ed instructors, support staff, Family Campers, lifeguards, Village Chiefs, nurses and doctors, and CITs. When you’re done reading this letter, we hope you will fire up your computer’s or smartphone’s web browser and will go immediately to these two pages:

http://frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits
http://frostvalleyymcaalumni.ning.com/

This email message will explain why. So please read on!

Hurricane Irene’s disastrous flooding took its toll on our beloved valley. Most receiving this letter will know what happened on the day after our final session’s summer campers left. Since then we have made a continuous effort to rebuild our community as quickly as possible. Thousands of dollars and hours of staff and volunteer labor later, we have removed debris, cleared camp roads, re-set hiking trails, and restored horse pastures.

Now we face our greatest post-Irene challenge: we must replace Pigeon Lodge, which Irene utterly (and horribly) destroyed. We must raise the money for the new building and we must complete its construction before the start of summer camp 2012.

It’s called Leadership Lodge, and without it our CITs, LITs and other “in-training” (“iT”) future camp leaders will have no home; or, we’d have to turn away 160 campers.

Yes, you read that correctly! The new building, replacing Pigeon, will be the home of our CITs. The first permanent home for our CITs in Frost Valley’s history. Many reading this letter will remember their own exciting CIT (or “LIT” or “FCC” or…) summer as if it were yesterday. Others are the parents, siblings, spouses, and dear friends of former CITs and will want, we hope, to honor them. What a time of life that was! We learned how to be leaders; we learned how important reliable, open-hearted leadership is to our own lives and to our world.

From the outside, Leadership Lodge will look like Pigeon Lodge did and Biscuit Lodge still does – wood framing on the second floor, with Forstmann-style dormers, and Neversink River stone masonwork gracing the exterior of the bottom floor. But inside, Leadership Lodge will consist of four cabin-style rooms.

Now, we together—people spread across the generations but with a life-changing experience in common—have a project to undertake. One of those four cabins, we hope, will always been known as “Alumni Cabin” in honor of our own—or our sons’ and daugthers’, or beloved friend’s or spouse’s—coming-of-age as Frost Valley leaders. If Frost Valley’s alumni and their loved ones are able to reach the goal of raising $75,000, every alumna or alumnus who makes a donation (or for whom a donation is made on their behalf) will be honored with her or his name on the walls of our cabin, along with the year of your CIT experience (if apt).

The building of Leadership Lodge so soon after Irene took away our beloved Pigeon Lodge is a characteristically creative response to setbacks by the people of Frost Valley. By rebuilding in this way, we are furthering our commitment to leadership development and reminding ourselves of the importance of our own personal decision to learn how to lead.

We hope you’ll help. Here’s how. First, go to the online Leadership Lodge Alumni Donation page at http://frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits and make a donation. Or call 845-985-2291 and ask to speak with Jess or Liane. Second, go to http://frostvalleyymcaalumni.ning.com/, log in to this social media site we’ve built for Frost Valley people, and join the community there.

This second step is nearly as important as the first. There are many thousands whose heartfelt experiences at Frost Valley changed their lives. But we are in touch with only around 2,500 of them. Our goal is to relocate some of those who have gotten out of touch—your fellow campers, members of your CIT cohort, and co-counselors. Help us find them and reunite them with the FV magic!

Thank you for whatever you can do to help.

Sincerely,
 
Al Filreis
Jeff Daly
Dan Weir

July 4, 1959

Flag raising on July 4, 1959. Camp Wawayanda's second July 4 at its new Frost Valley site. At left is Mike DeVita (VC of Forest), in the middle (on the drums) is Dave King (VC of Lenape), and at right (probably) is Tom Squires (VC of Totem).

Olympic team from Germany, early 80s

Jurgen Bobrowski was an ICCP counselor from Germany in the early 1980s. In 1980 he was the head coach of Germany during our Olympics. That year one of the other teams was the Soviet Union (Russia) - and that's because for a month of camp we had three Russian visitors. This was the summer of the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics (President Carter's way of protesting Soviet intervention in Afghanistan) and so we felt pretty special, working peacefully with these visiting Russian YMCA staffers. (Stuart Kaufer, the head of our dialysis unit in those years, spoke fluent Russian and was the head coach of the Soviet Union team!) Bobo (as we called Jurgen) wanted to make a gesture, Germany to Russian, and so he and his team-mates painted a "peace dove" inside a map of the USSR in the German banner. Probably you can't discern all this from this somewhat blurry picture, but there's the story.

Reflection Pond this morning at 7:30 am

As I passed by on a 2-mile run.

very soon to be home for our CITs

Leadership Lodge, replacing Pigeon Lodge (destroyed by Hurricane Irene), is nearly finished. It will be the permanent home of our CIT program. If you can help with this project, please consider it. We need to raise $130,000 more in order to pay for the construction: http://frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits.

thank you from the FV board of trustees

important letter for all: 1) new social media site for alumni; 2) help us build Leadership Lodge to replace Pigeon

Dear Frost Valley alumni, one & all:

We are writing to many, many former Frost Valley campers, trip leaders, directors, program staff, counselors, environmental ed instructors, support staff, Family Campers, lifeguards, Village Chiefs, nurses and doctors, and CITs. When you’re done reading this letter, we hope you will fire up your computer’s or smartphone’s web browser and will go immediately to these two pages:

frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits
frostvalleyymcaalumni.ning.com

This email message will explain why. So please read on!

Hurricane Irene’s disastrous flooding took its toll on our beloved valley. Most receiving this letter will know what happened on the day after our final session’s summer campers left. Since then we have made a continuous effort to rebuild our community as quickly as possible. Thousands of dollars and hours of staff and volunteer labor later, we have removed debris, cleared camp roads, re-set hiking trails, and restored horse pastures.

Now we face our greatest post-Irene challenge: we must replace Pigeon Lodge, which Irene utterly (and horribly) destroyed. We must raise the money for the new building and we must complete its construction before the start of summer camp 2012. It’s called Leadership Lodge, and without it our CITs, LITs and other “in-training” (“iT”) future camp leaders will have no home; or, we’d have to turn away 160 campers.

Yes, you read that correctly! The new building, replacing Pigeon, will be the home of our CITs. The first permanent home for our CITs in Frost Valley’s history. Many reading this letter will remember their own exciting CIT (or “LIT” or “FCC” or…) summer as if it were yesterday. Others are the parents, siblings, spouses, and dear friends of former CITs and will want, we hope, to honor them. What a time of life that was! We learned how to be leaders; we learned how important reliable, open-hearted leadership is to our own lives and to our world.

From the outside, Leadership Lodge will look like Pigeon Lodge did and Biscuit Lodge still does – wood framing on the second floor, with Forstmann-style dormers, and Neversink River stone masonwork gracing the exterior of the bottom floor. But inside, Leadership Lodge will consist of four cabin-style rooms. Now, we together—people spread across the generations but with a life-changing experience in common—have a project to undertake. One of those four cabins, we hope, will always been known as “Alumni Cabin” in honor of our own—or our sons’ and daugthers’, or beloved friend’s or spouse’s—coming-of-age as Frost Valley leaders. If Frost Valley’s alumni and their loved ones are able to reach the goal of raising $75,000, every alumna or alumnus who makes a donation (or for whom a donation is made on their behalf) will be honored with her or his name on the walls of our cabin, along with the year of your CIT experience (if apt).

The building of Leadership Lodge so soon after Irene took away our beloved Pigeon Lodge is a characteristically creative response to setbacks by the people of Frost Valley. By rebuilding in this way, we are furthering our commitment to leadership development and reminding ourselves of the importance of our own personal decision to learn how to lead. We hope you’ll help. Here’s how. First, go to the online Leadership Lodge Alumni Donation page at frostvalley.kintera.org/leadershiplodge/cits and make a donation. Or call 845-985-2291 and ask to speak with Jess or Liane. Second, go to frostvalleyymcaalumni.ning.com, log in to this social media site we’ve built for Frost Valley people, and join the community there.

This second step is nearly as important as the first. There are many thousands whose heartfelt experiences at Frost Valley changed their lives. But we are in touch with only around 2,500 of them. Our goal is to relocate some of those who have gotten out of touch—your fellow campers, members of your CIT cohort, and co-counselors. Help us find them and reunite them with the FV magic!

Thank you for whatever you can do to help.

Sincerely,

Al Filreis
Jeff Daly
Dan Weir

Leadership Lodge

Click here to read an important article about how Leadership Lodge is being built to replace Pigeon Lodge, which was destroyed by Hurricane Irene at the end of last summer.

Wanda Cypert has died at 93

Wanda Cypert, a long (long!)-time Frost Valley staff person, and long-time neighbor, has died. Her husband Paul was our maintenance director in the early 1960s, and their daughter Sue spent several years living at FV and working as a year-long Environmental Education instructor (she is now a college administrator in upstate New York). Wanda retired some years ago and lived just down the road from FV.

Glenn Horton writes: "I have some sad news. Wanda Cypert passed away this past weekend (March 10th) at the age of 93. For those that did not know Wanda, she was a true fixture of Frost Valley with a smile and attitude that warmed hearts with every encounter. Wanda filled in where ever necessary. Between houskeeping, laundry in the summer, and/or food service, she was one of those people that found Frost Valley to be home and the staff as her family. I'm not sure how long she spent working at the Valley, but the Cypert name has roots there as far back as the 60's. I for one will miss her smile."

reunion hoopla

FV people never outgrow the best antics: hoopla.

she visited once and never forgot

You'd think that most of the folks who find this blog and read it intensively are long-time "lifer" types, people whose lives are entwined with the place over years, decades even. But there are people who encountered the valley just once and will never forget it. One such person is Alyson, who visited Frost Valley for an "Indian Princesses" weekend (girls and their dads) back in the 1980s - as a 7 year old - and has thought about it always. Then she went searching on the 'net for FV and found us. So take a look at photos of a person whose life was memorably influenced by just one visit. Let's now go back to the early 80s.**




** (By the way, we know her visit was in the fall of 1983, 84 or 85, because we see her eating with her group in what is now Geyer Hall, the "old girls' dining hall," which was used while the new dining hall was being built in place of the original which had burned in the winter of 1982-83.)

old photo leads to thoughts of John Mumford

Photo taken in the early 70s, possibly 1969, by Ken Nathanson's dad during a visiting day or possibly check-in day at the beginning of a camp session. The fellow in the rakish-angeled straw hat is, I believe, Ken's older brother, whom we called "Snake" in those days. I could be wrong about that. The guy in the white shirt, wearing glasses, is the brilliant and creative John Mumford. John eventually became the quirkiest and most avant-garde VC of Forest in history. It was he who convinced us all that Forest needed a mascot - who turned out to be Kim Connell's goat, whom we named Bozo and who spent most of the summer with us. John also noticed that at night in the summer the constellation Cassiopia appeared as a "W" over cabin 6 when you sat at the CQ fire in the middle of cabins 6-10 (old arrangement, near the dining hall), and that any counselor assigned to cabin 6 would become "worthless." Thenceforward the "W" (two hands holding up index and middle finger, forming the now-famous Wawayanda W sign) referred not to "Wawayanda" but to "Wawayanda Worthless," a secret (and no doubt often unfair) judgment of counselors who weren't doing their jobs very well. It was Mumford who provided an apprenticeship (when he was a JC) for John Ferris, who himself turned out to be the very opposite of worthless - a smart and super-creative and abundantly dedicated counselor, especially for troubled kids.

lifer brick

Doubletop this morning

Doubletop Mountain this morning: 2 degrees Farenheit and a fresh several inches of snow.

tobaggan run

Here's a photo sent to me by Ken Nathanson. I'm guessing that it was taken in the early 70s. What is now the tube run - the grooved hill running down from the cabin 21-25 area (between 25 and 24 on the south side of the area) - used to be our tobaggan run. And, oh boy, when the snow was hard and slick a tobaggan, especially one loaded with people, could really move fast and, often, a little unpredictably. Down at the bottom of the run, just off to the left, was a shed we took to calling "the tobaggan shed" (although in the summer it was for years called "the Nature shed").

Leading the way here was Tom Ricciardi, patriarch of a sturdy family of Mountainside NJ-based Frost Valley friends. Tom was a member of FV's trustees. His son Pat was a longtime camper and then staffer. The Ricciardis, during the winter, come up to FV nearly every weekend as part of a snowmobile club, and they often otherwise spent a fun weekend in the Castle. Tom ran a construction firm and I believe provided the construction materials for building Turrell Lodge, Hird Lodge and the little (now-gone) house that came to be called "Ricciardi Cabin." And I believe Tom and his friends and family themselves built Ricciardi Cabin along with Carl Hess in - I think - 1969.

Bud Cox, Doug Kerr

trip list, early 80s

Here is a "trip list" for an Adirondack canoe trip from the early 1980s. You'll notice that toilet paper is a starred item. Okay, fine - obvious and still a starred object for today's trips! Look closely and see if you can discern items that are typically outmoded or different today.

Ted Forstmann (grandson of Julius) has died

from the New York Times, November 19, 2011:

Theodore J. Forstmann, a colorful financier and philanthropist who helped pioneer leveraged buyouts, died on Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 71.

The cause was brain cancer, his spokesman said. Mr. Forstmann had been found to have a malignant glioma earlier this year.

Mr. Forstmann was among the first executives to use debt to acquire companies, fix them and then sell them for millions — and sometimes billions — of dollars in profit.

Beginning in the late 1970s, he pooled money from wealthy investors and large pension funds to back his acquisitions while taking 20 percent of the profits, creating a business model that today is known as the private equity industry.

During the next three decades Mr. Forstmann bought, sold and turned around dozens of companies, including Gulfstream Aerospace, Dr Pepper and General Instrument.

He also coined, if inadvertently, a phrase that set the public image of the leveraged buyout industry. While he was golfing in the late 1980s with Richard L. Gelb, then the chairman of Bristol Myers, the discussion turned to a surge in takeovers by buyout firms. “What does it all mean?” Mr. Gelb asked Mr. Forstmann.

“It means the barbarians are at the gate,” Mr. Forstmann replied. “And they’ll be coming for you next.”

The phrase “barbarians at the gate” was used by Bryan Burrough and John Helyar for the title of their best-selling 1990 book about the $25 billion buyout of RJR Nabisco, which Mr. Forstmann had bid on and lost to a private equity rival, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts.

Yet as buyouts grew and more and more debt was used to finance deals, Mr. Forstmann grew more cautious about the business. In an op-ed article in The Wall Street Journal in 1988, at the height of the buyout craze, he wrote, “Watching these deals get done is like watching a herd of drunk drivers take to the highway on New Year’s Eve.”

Mr. Forstmann, who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, was also among the first philanthropists to push for voucher programs for education in the 1990s, leading to the movement by financiers to promote charter schools. In 1999 he founded the Children’s Scholarship Fund with John T. Walton, the son of the Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, to offer scholarships allowing underprivileged children to attend private schools using vouchers. He donated $50 million.

The scholarship fund has since given away $443 million to 116,000 children.

Most of Mr. Forstmann’s philanthropy centered on children. In 1992 he founded the Silver Lining Ranch, a camp for terminally ill children in Aspen, Colo., that was first run by Andrea Jaeger, the former professional tennis player.

For 25 years he held a prominent charity tennis tournament, known as “Huggy Bear,” at his summer home in Southampton, N.Y., raising over $20 million for children’s charities by bringing tennis pros like Martina Navratilova and Boris Becker to play against amateur donors.

An influential donor to Republican candidates and causes, Mr. Forstmann was co-chairman of George H. W. Bush’s re-election campaign in 1992. He named Republican allies to run the companies his firm owned, appointing Donald H. Rumsfeld as chief executive of General Instrument in 1990 and adding Colin L. Powell to the board of Gulfstream.

Unusual for a financier, Mr. Forstmann was also a regular boldface name in the gossip pages. He had a brief romantic relationship with Diana, Princess of Wales, which he said later turned into a long-term friendship.

He was often photographed arm in arm with a model or actress, including Elizabeth Hurley. (He was later the godfather of her son.) Over the last several years he dated Padma Lakshmi, the celebrity host of “Top Chef” and a model and the former wife of Salman Rushdie.

Mr. Forstmann never married and had a complicated view of the single life. In 1995 he told The Washington Post: “I find the prospect of being married more difficult than most people. I would be a difficult husband.” He added: “Maybe I’ll adopt some children. I’m not going to do nothing about this.”

Two years later Mr. Forstmann became the guardian of an orphaned child from South Africa, Everest, now 30. Mr. Forstmann was invited to South Africa in 1996 by Nelson Mandela to address the Parliament on democratic capitalism. He was so moved by the work Mr. Mandela was doing with orphaned children that he made a $1 million donation. It was on a subsequent visit to Africa to see the orphanage that he had paid for that he met Everest.

“This kid is for me, that’s it,” he recalled in an interview about the moment they met. In another visit two years later, he met another boy, Siya, who had become close to Everest. He brought them both to live with him in New York and became their guardian.

In addition to Siya and Everest, his survivors include two brothers, J. Anthony and John, and two sisters, Marina Forstmann Day and Elissa Forstmann Moran.

Theodore Joseph Forstmann, Ted or Teddy to his friends, was born on Feb. 13, 1940, and grew up in Greenwich, Conn., one of six children. He played ice hockey at Yale and put himself through Columbia Law School with proceeds from gambling on bridge.

In 1978 he started his leveraged buyout fund, Forstmann Little & Company, with his brother Nicholas and Brian Little, an investment banker. While other firms relied on the public debt markets, Forstmann Little raised its own special subordinated debt fund.

His firm had a long stretch of beating his rivals, with an annual average rate of return of over 55 percent a year on its equity funds through 2001.

But that winning streak came to an end that year when two telecommunications investments made at the height of the industry bubble, XO Communications and McLeodUSA, failed. He later said that he should not have made the investments and blamed himself for delegating investing to a younger generation enchanted by the Internet.

Over the last seven years he worked steadily on his last big investment: IMG, the sports, fashion and media company that represented the likes of Tiger Woods and Roger Federer. He bought the company in 2004 for $750 million and became its chairman.

It encompassed everything he loved: deal-making and sports.

the wall at old Arts & Crafts

We'll soon be taking down the old Arts & Crafts shop. For those who go back many years, they will remember it as the old maintenance shop. Later it served as a bike shop, and on and off as an extra Out-trip storage area. For a few years it was the staff gym, with weights and a few machines. Anyway, this old building, built against the Castle hill wall, will come down in deference to a new Pigeon Lodge. More on that later. Meantime: I walked through the old place today and took some photos. This one is one of the original stone walls, covered by the creative spatterings of many many summers of campers and staff at Arts & Crafts.

Tison house

Tison house (usually called "Red Lodge," I believe) is a Japanese-style building with lots of touches of the Adirondack style too. It sits on a gorgeous piece of property at the very end of the road that follows the East Branch of the Neversink River - through Claryville and miles beyond. It's past Frost Valley's farm, and past Straus/East Valley Ranch. Since the 1970s, Frost Valley has had an arrangement with the Tison family. As I say, the road ends here, beyond which is the trail that heads up Slide (Table, Peekamoose, etc. on the way to Slide) the "back way." It's a gorgeous hike, and much nicer than the wide-trail hike you take up to the top of Slide from the Frost Valley Road/West Branch Neversink road (route 47). The photo here was taken this past July.

Biscut Creek's new path

During the Irene deluge, Biscuit Creek found a new path. Photo by Bill Abbott.

organizational structure and trustee committees, 1959

Click on the image for a larger view.

when Lake Cole was brand new

The article here was published in a local New Jersey newspaper in 1959--probably the Westfield paper. It marks the completion of the construction of what we now call "Lake Cole" at Frost Valley. The article refers to it as "Wawayanda Lake." The camp had moved from New Jersey to Frost Valley the summer before. During that first summer, campers swam in a rectangular muddy pond built by Forstmann in the field across from the Castle, and also in Biscuit Creek Falls, Devil's Hole, and various swimming spots. At the time of this article - presumably late spring - what was a marshy field was bulldozed and fed by an inlet diverted from the Neversink River (near where the boathouse is now) and by a creek (which still has no name) coming across the Deus property across the bottom of what is now the hill leading up to cabins 31-35. Three Westfield boys posted for the newspaper's cameraman - allegedly the first people ever to go boating in our lake. Two of them became Frost Valley legends - Jim Ewen and John Ketcham.




Dave King remembers as follows: "As I remember it, the 'pool' across from the Castle was dug prior to opening Wawayanda in 1958. Thus, the VERY MUDDY pool. The pool was made in order to say that we had a "water program". Hal Russmeyer did as much as he could with it. The Board attempted to build a lake during 1959, but the builder was not able to stop the water from flowing out. The builder went bankrupt, and Harry Cole, the property manager, repaired the earthen dam and controlled the exit flow so that the lake levels could be stabilized. Thus, the lake was named for him. Also, 1959 was an arid summer. Biscuit Creek was about 2 feet wide and 4 inches deep. Somewhere, I have a picture of me standing on both sides of the lake (actually, it was more like a drainage ditch)."

Thanks to Ellen Rutan, who found the old article among the files of Liz Ewen, Jim's mom.

dedication to the point of tattoo

Nick Lomauro was one of our CIT Coordinators this summer--an extremely devoted fellow. The job clearly meant everything to him and he did remarkably good work with his CITs and the other coordinators. Near the very end of fourth session, as we all stood around between acts at Hirdstock, someone heard a rumor about a new tattoo under his t-shirt. So he took off said shirt and revealed his then-new expression of commitment to the Y. He asked me not to post this blog entry until he'd had a chance to get his parents (Y people themselves) and sister (Lauren, former VC, etc.--and herself a great FV staffer) a chance to get used to it. Well, I have to say that we're not necessarily recommending such displays of dedication, but we have to admit we admire the depth of Nick's feelings. May those feelings remain in him exactly as long as the tattoo lasts!

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Totem Village having fun!

A cabin of boys in Totem Village, summer of 1962. We don't know which cabin (it would have been 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5) and we can't identify any of the boys. If you can help, please email me at afilreis [at] gmail.com. Jim Wilkes thinks that the village chief of Totem that year was Mike DeVita. Dave King believes that Mike was the counselor of this cabin (and VC of the village). Dave was the Program Director in '62. When Wawayanda moved to Frost Valley in 1958, Mike DeVita was the VC of Forest that first summer.

Pigeon Lodge today

Photos by Dan Weir.

okay, now's the time to help

Dear former and current staff of Frost Valley:

This past weekend Hurricane Irene slammed into Frost Valley. While media attention focused mostly on the coastlines, Frost Valley was hit hard. Through the alertness and skill of our staff, everyone at camp is safe. But the damage to roads, paths, trails, bridges, and Pigeon Lodge was extensive. Although the winds were not strong, driving rains caused water to cascade violently down the creeks and streams, wreaking havoc to every part of the valley.

As the staff work hard, day and night, to re-open the camp and get us back up and running, the executive leadership and the board are now focusing on financial issues that must quickly be addressed—processing insurance claims, reaching out for state and federal support, taking stock of all available resources—and will immediately plan the rebuilding of Frost Valley.

So this is a call to action. We ask all friends of Frost Valley—everyone who has enjoyed this place, learned here and played here, celebrated milestones here, and whose children have grown up here—to step up now and help us quickly repair the damage done by this hurricane. With your support, we can fund reconstruction priorities quickly. Roads, trails, and bridges need to be rebuilt, and plans for rebuilding Pigeon Lodge must commence. Please help Frost Valley as soon as you possibly can with a donation to the Hurricane Irene Frost Valley Relief Fund. An online gift will help us most expeditiously:

www.frostvalley.org/relieffund

--but we welcome donations in any form. Mail a check to Frost Valley YMCA, 2000 Frost Valley Road, Claryville, NY 12725, or call us at (845) 985-2291 to discuss other arrangements.

Thank you!

- Al Filreis

Pigeon Brook Lodge, 1928-2011

the day after

Forking to the left is the county road (route 47) heading away from camp. Forking to the right is the road going past Lake Cole and up the hill toward Hird Lodge.

The road coming down from the dining hall toward Big Tree Field.

Gail on the '72 flood & Pigeon Lodge

Gail McNeill writes: "In ’72, I was late getting to FV for my first summer because the bridges were washed out on the road, and we were kayaking on Big Tree Field that year. I remember the waters lapping at Pigeon many times. . . but gone? Wow. Memories. . . doing linens on Sunday afternoons, and many a root beer float (and budding romance) at the staff lounge. I can believe there is much work to do."

Yes, it's true: Pigeon Lodge was for many years the summertime staff lounge, open in the evenings with a full kitchen (cheesburgers, root beer floats, etc.).

Rick Wormeli speaks for many of us when he says...

Here's Rick Wormeli, responding to the news of Irene's impact on Frost Valley:

Thanks for this, Al. I worried about FV all weekend. We came through fine here in northern Virginia, but other places in Virginia did not fare as well. I watched the Outpost singing that you captured on video as they prepared for Hirdstock -- Wow, was that wonderful and Intensely moving, especially after just viewing the pictures of the end of Pigeon Lodge. I spent a summer in Pigeon Lodge back in ‘82 or ‘83 with Iscusfa, the Performing Arts Camp, with David Sunshine, Carrie Fiedler, and PR McCollum, among others. We also stayed there for some off-season planning weekends for the Directors throughout the 80’s. ‘So many memories of Pigeon and Biscuit Creek….and the music in cabin 37 pulled at every counselor heartstring.

What an amazing emanci- pation, what a conduit for serious connection, Frost Valley is! The powerful messages and the lifting of humanity found in Hirdstock, the Olympics, closing campfires, and just being with one another -- wow. ‘Nostalgia, yes, but none of it superficial. The best of those times are who we are today, contributing to the world. Looking at all your posts renews the fire to re-create a Frost Valley connection and experience with others beyond the Catskills. I need to weave FV sentiments and virtues more purposefully into my work with schools, when sharing the journey with friends and family, and even with strangers sitting with me in airport lounges waiting for delayed flights or when debating those with different politics than my own. Something’s right with the world when Frost Valley has such a positive impact on those who walked its paths.

With so many worthy organizations and positive experiences for children and adults in our society running out of steam or crippled by the economy, it’s refreshing and hopeful to see Frost Valley still maintaining its vision and growing strong. And you’re right: FV is a reminder of the ethical/compassionate/courageous things we do today and pass on to our children. It’s hard to know where FV ends and I begin, and that’s a really nice feeling.

Thanks again, Al, for taking the time to post the observations and photos. They all mean a lot to those of us who can’t get back for the summer.

For more about Rick, go here. In the photo above, taken at the 2001 reunion, Rick is in the middle, third from left. Left to right: Dave King, Digger Shortt, Rick Wormeli, Al Filreis, David Allen.