big tree then, big tree now

Some things never change, or seemingly. We love this place because there are markers - things we know in our bones we will see when we arrive. My son, upon arriving in the car, said, "We're home." My daughter, feeling the same way but expressing it differently, said: "Look. There's the Big Tree."

Here (above) is a nice B&W snapshot of the Big Tree in 1971. And here, below, is a photo take by Sandy Shapiro Bohn just an hour ago:

1972 energy

David Magid was here today, dropping off his son Noah for camp. I can't remember when I last saw him (could be decades) but I have a distinct image of him as the smart, engaged, political, sometimes ascerbic counselor of Outpost cabin 15 ("the highest cabin in camp" - feet above sea level) in 1972. That summer he and Cathy Hale were an item - both very interesting people. Well, today I only had a few minutes with Dave but was happy that I thought to snap this picture. Welcome back to FV, Dave Magid!

Now the photo below won a prize, and the reproduction of it here comes originally from a newspaper reprint. It was taken in the Big Tree Field. It's a sack race - in action. The counselor in the back is....David Magid! Rick Heuser took the picture. He ran our photography program in those days. For this photo
Rick won an international photography contest - for its depiction of the "energy" of the girl in the race.

more on alumni kids on staff

The two paragraphs below were meant for the previous entry about alumni kids now on staff here. It's one sign - of many, fortunately - that there are readers of this blog out there...that a number of people noticed the names missing from the earlier post.

Sandy Shapiro Bohn is here again, all the way from Arizona. Daughter Mariah is here as a Junior Counselor, came a week early for training. Daughter Shaina, although at first thinking she would have a miss a summer, has arranged to come later to be a counselor for several weeks. Son Braxton came Friday with Sandy and will be here the first session.

Hope Simons Colton’s daughter Lisa is the VC of Susky – one of the most talented VCs we have. (Here’s to the good counseling genes of previous generations of Frost Valley staff!) Hope and son Eric will be visiting later in the summer.

A gang of former staff - volunteers this weekend - and their about-to-be camper children went to Phoenicia to have brunch at Sweet Sue's. Here they are (below). I can assure you that Sweet Sue's made us happier than we look in this shot. That's Kenny Nathanson at bottom left (your left) and Peter Tilles at bottom right. I'm with Sandy standing.

early morn musings

5:30 AM check-in day, first session of summer ’08. I get up early, not because I’m excited (oh, my, I’ve seen too many check-ins to be excited at this point) but because I just get up early at this point in my life. (Later observation inserted here: out the window where I type this, now 6:47 AM, I see go by on the road one of the white Frost Valley mini-school buses, driven by David Lockwood – a former staffer and camp director here to do driving and other odd jobs of the sort constantly needed – and in the bus I see the nodding sleepy heads of lucky one-per-village ‘volunteer’ staff members sent to Montclair, Newark, and Manhattan to be the “bus staff,” greeting parents, loading luggage and supervising the noisy excited trip back up here later today.) Back to 5:30: I step outside onto the rickety old-wood back porch of the Flyfishing Cottage and look westward (in the direction away from camp) and see a dawn view that I suppose could have been seen precisely this way in 1890. Now that’s in itself something to crow about in 2008. The unmown field, wildflowers here and there, is covered a few feet above it with a thick morning mist and the heavy dew on the ground below glistens. (Remember the sun is behind us – in the east, so I don’t see the light directly but I see it start to do its thing on the droplets the night left.) I see the road curving rightward at the old Haunted House site, just at the very western edge of FV’s property along the Neversink. And the Neversink, I hear her sing her high early-summer plenty-of-water-in-me-thank-you throaty breathy singing. And I actually see her, just a glimpse. And I see the old one-room schoolhouse, the furthest-west building FV owns, where Bud Cox lives without a phone (so far as I know) and certainly without an internet connection. The powerline to Bud’s house is obscured by the trees. And because Julius Forstmann sent the powerlines up back along the hill behind the road and the houses along the road, I see not a 20th- or 21st-century wire. The vista is the real deal. I’m here.

I get on my bike, still before 6 AM, and bike as fast as I can. It’s a small-wheeled bike, one of those fabulous fold-up bikes, perfect for the city (where you can fold it and bring it into your office or home so it doesn’t get stolen – or you can take it on the train or throw it in the car’s trunk) but not so perfect for the long slow uphill grade from the western end of camp up to the lake and main area. I want to get in shape (my heart is pumping by the time I reach the boathouse) but I also want to take in the quiet-before-kids scene. It’s really really quiet. So quiet that this is what I hear: starlings in the horsebarn (the horses’ feathered friends); rushing sound of feeder stream feeding Lake Cole; and – just barely – the noisy bugs munching and rubbing legs in the Big Tree Field; the sound of my own faithful heart.

On the way back (nice gentle downhill most of the way) I start to relax as I pass the now-grown pine and other evergreens we once planted along the slope down from the lake along the county road. Any time of day and it’s relatively dark there, and cool. Nice. I open my mouth to breath happily and into it flies bug after bug – the little black guys of late June, some black flies and some just common less bothersome gnats. I knew a camp guy who used to “eat” these – that is to say, seek out places where he could get a mouthful, and then gulped and swallow. “Protein,” he used to say. (Needless to mention: he was an Adventure Camp trip leader.) But I am less sanguine about these bugs in my mouth. I am a 50-something guy, on an urban fold-up bike, in the middle of nowhere, at an ungodly hour (but my point is – it’s godly), with a surprised-shaped O-shaped orifice, deciding whether to pick out the alien critters that wandered in, stopping now, and deciding, what the hell, and take a gulp. I’m here. Did I say I’m here? I’m here.

sightings: kids of alum on staff

Ladd Fly Connell (always amazed by that middle name) brought his son Ben back to camp for staff training. Ben’s a counselor now, a chip off the old dad block. Not as shy as Ladd but every bit as diligent. Ben heads off to VCU for his first year of college in August, and will thus leave before the end of the summer.

Cathy Hogan (Australian counselor from the mid and late 80s) has two nieces whom she’s kindly sent to us. I’ve met just one of them – and briefly. But I can tell instantly two things: (a) my, these nieces look like their aunt did 20 years ago, and (b) there’s the same confident spunk. I predict this will be a fabulous summer for these new Hogans and for us having them on the staff. Ruth Krotchko and Cathy are still in touch after these years (they were in Tacoma together back in – what was it? – ’85 and/or 85?). Cathy will be visiting here herself sometime in August.

Rafik Melek Ghobrial’s daughter Katie is here as a junior counselor, all the way from L.A. Rafik threatens to visit himself. He was once “The Geek of the Week,” but in my book he’s the Geek of the Century.

John Wellington’s daughter Kelsey is also a J.C. – at the Farm Camp. We drove by there yesterday and saw the Farm Camp staff in the middle of their training. As we walked toward the barn (to say hello to the adorable ponies and new kids [not campers – baby goats]) we met the staff coming back from there. “How’d it go?” “Well,” one of them said, “we weren’t able to get the sheep to do what we told them to.” Another said: "Yeah, we'll try again tomorrow." Hmmm. I suppose that’s what staff training is for . . . at the farm!

Day off for the sheep, I guess.

There are two Glickers (children of Robin Helfand) on the staff now – Allye (a VC) and Jessie (a JC).

And then there's Brad Swain. Is it possible that Peter and Claudia Swain's son is old enough to be on the Frost Valley staff? Yup indeed. The Swains have been at Camp Fuller for some years now, and Brad hasn't been back much to Frost Valley, where he spent his early years, but now he's back and FV partisans (with all due respect to Fuller) are hoping he has the summer of his life and decides to stay on....

in Russia, we drink much milk

For years we did a skit called "the Russian Midget." It's a probably standard skit-like trick performed at many camps: you build a simple screen (usually a sewn sheet) into which is inserted a specially cut-up sweatshirt. Someone's hands and head go into the sweatshirt (the feet go into some old shoes and thus become the feet) and the rest of his or her body is obscured by the sheet and a table. Someone else's arms go through the sweatshirt sleeves. Now you have two people configured to seem like one little person.

Once the skit starts, the object is to feature the funny legs-arms combination. The audience knows that the guy with the face is also the guy with the feet - and thus can't control his own arms. The guy controlling the arms is out to make the arms and hands work just well enough to keep a bit of the illusion that this is one person, and just clumsily enough so that funny things happen, such as: The Russian Midget, during his typical day at camp, eats a big bowl of cereal. "In Russia we really love breakfast. We eat lots of cereal." (Now the arms are pouring some cereal into a large bowl and a little bit of milk.) "We eat LOTS of cereal." (As if that's a cue to the arms to pour more. Whereupon arms pour SO MUCH more that it overflows the bowl; camper audience laughs.) "And we love to drink LOTS of milk." (Now a small pint carton of milk is replaced by a gallon of milk and it is poured in the bowl and all over the midget's face, after which he tries to wipe his face with his feet!) And so on....

I'm sure there's some kind of Cold War-related origin of the title we gave this skit (and its little guy): "The Russian Midget." Almost surely it came from Camp Fitch in the mid-60s along with lots else. (That's where Halbe Brown came from, and he brought with him skits like this along with a bunch of staff, such as the Hettlers.) I believe the first Russian Midget I saw was done by Halbe Brown himself along with Bobby Hettler. Later Halbe and Tom Holland, and also Bob and Bill Hettler (the brothers, one the Boys' Camp Director and other the camp doctor [and Father of Wellness]).

By the mid-70s, I had learned to do it - and remember one especially good performance Rick Cobb and I did at the July 4th stage show down at the beach (while everyone waited impatiently for it to get dark enough to shoot off the fireworks from the other side of the lake).

By the mid-80s, which this photo was snapped by a camper sitting at the nearest dining hall table one day after lunch, the Russian Midget had been passed on...to the likes of Ken and Bill Abbott. (What is this about this skit and brothers? I suppose partly it's about finding a partner who knows your moves instinctively.)

Shown here above, from our left to right: Adam Diamond (camper), Michael Moore (camper), Bill Abbott playing guitar as the midget, the late Dave Nalven, Michael Schneide (camper).

tall grass, really tall grass

Bud Cox, who (as everyone knows) was there 50 years ago, led a rousing version of "Goin' on a Lion Hunt" today during staff training. Click on the image and watch the video.

summer is good

Summer is far and away my favorite season. Not even close. The other day I was walking across a field near the East Branch of the Neversink River. The air was cool and yet the sun was hot (that possible?). The breeze was giving me a slight shiver on my arms but the sun on the back of my neck felt warm and close. The combination was stunning. Perfect weather. Hotcha!

Below: that same perfect sun at 6 PM - leaving in cool shade pre-dinnertime gatherers on the stone deck just outside the Straus House sun porch, while that perfect sun warms the top of the building. And look at that sky!

this isn't a punishment

Our current Camp Director of Wawayanda, Dan Weir (see "Ol' Wawayanda in Good Hands"), appears in a recent issue of the New York Post. The article - "AMPED FOR CAMP" (is that a classic Post headline, or what?) - is about homesickness. Here's Dan in the story:

And while it's hard to ignore a child's pleas, don't rush out to retrieve him, says Frost Valley YMCA's Dan Weir.

"A good parent will say, 'I'll come get you,' and that's a way to be supportive and be there for your child, but that leaves a little bit of a window of self-doubt for the child to wiggle into," the camp director says.

"[But] a great parent will say, 'This isn't a punishment, we really want you to give this a good try. If you don't want to go back next year, you don't have to.' This really sets the child up to succeed, since all the child might need is a few days of getting acclimated."

Way before your child gets on the bus, talk about camp as the vacation it is - one filled with fun and freedom.

Just make sure you don't cry when you say goodbye. If you do tend to get misty, wear sunglasses!

Here's your link to the Post.

hope you had the time of your life

Brendan Heldenfels put together a beautiful 9 1/2-minute video montage, set to stirring music, of photographs across all years. It's been posted to YouTube. Just get your popcorn, dim the lights, find someone to whom you want to tell camp stories, and click on the image above.

You're tuning into an old-style radio, with a dial. Turn the dial a bit and hear a song from the '60s (and now the cabins are new, the docks at the lake seem in the wrong place, a few crewcuts mixed with some fairly hip-looking characters), finger the dial again and it's another time and set of images. Tune time back and forward.

A number of the photographs date back to the Old Wawayanda prior to the move to Frost Valley fifty summers ago. But for the most part the video traces our work and play across the decades, with songs and photos from the 60s, then the 70s, 80s, 90s, 00s. Certain themes merge in and out of the decades: coming & going; the buildings; outdoor education and conferencing; etc.

Some highlights to watch for:

[] Halbe Brown's red plaid pants, circa 1976.

[] wellness-minded girl campers surround chain-smoker Chuck White as they take his blood pressure and listen to his heart.

[] misty sunrise over Lake Cole.

[] Eva Gottscho (co-creator of our dialysis program) with dialysis camper Stevie Bell in her lap.

[] the late John Ketcham blowing on the embers, in Canada, a Trailblazer for all time.

[] Wawayanda camp directors across the decades gather together to lead the noonday grace at a recent reunion.

[] You ain't goin' nowhere.

[] Lenape boys, clad in white Wawayanda tees, head out for an overnight...walking in a perfectly straight line.

[] the old garage before it was Hayden Lodge.

[] the late Oran Giannotti hanging out with good friends.

[] tons of Hirdstock shots.

[] lighting the Olympic torch.

[] everyone wearing really short shorts.

[] Mac guy learns to ride a bike.

I hope you had the time of you life. If so, I'll be joining you in that good company.

thank you, grandma, for sending me to camp

Our old friend Afua Preston (she was a camper in my last years as director) currently works at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies in the Foreign Languages, Translations and Interpreting Program, where she is the Assistant Director for Academic Operations.

Recently Afua and I had a good email exchange, and, after a bit, this wonderful story came out. Here's Afua to tell it:

I wanted to mention that Frost Valley has been on mind over the past month after the death of my Grandmother Dina La Barre in April. She worked at the YMCA in Montclair, NJ and because she worked there, she was able to get a discount for me and my older brother Matthew Starensier to go Frost Valley for over 10 years. During her Memorial through the tears I was able to get out how much her sending me to Frost Valley meant to me. How I was such a NYC girl but for 2 -8 weeks every summer I was in a place of fun, good people and productive physical and mental challenges. It was at Frost Valley that I overcame my fear of heights, learned to ride a horse, learned to swim (well may I add) and lose my fear of unrecognizable noises in the night. FV is also why I have a collection of sounds of rain CDs. I always loved the sound of rain falling on the trees while in my cabin. It was also my Grandmother and her late husband Kenneth La Barre who wrote me the the most wonderful letters keeping my homesickness at bay. I guess I took it for granted because I had no idea that she was the reason why I was able to afford to go to Frost Valley. I didn't know what a privilege it was to go to a sleep away camp until I would talk about my summers to college friends and co workers. I am grateful to her and to Frost Valley. Every now and then here in New York City I'll see someone with Frost Valley T-shirt or Sweatshirt and I swear I want to run over to them and ask "What village were you in?"

The photo atop the entry is of Afua as a Windsong camper in (I think) '84. And here at right is Afua today.

t-shirt interregnum years

I've had the pleasure as your faithful columnist to comment on several ugly FV t-shirts. Indeed one of my favorite entries overall was a discussion of a synthetic mesh staff shirt that would literally melt on you on a hot check-in Sunday.

But now that I ponder the situation I realize that, where camp clothing nostalgia is concerned, ugliness is in the eye of the beholder.

At the most recent big reunion, we held an auction to benefit camperships. A number of folks brought old FV t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and other old canteen/store items. These went for remarkably high prices. One old Wawayanda child-size hooded sweatshirt (with the old logo showing two campers paddling a long canoe, presumably across Lake Wawayanda) was sold, I believe to Amy Ketcham, for $250! Another hoodie was bought by Eileen Barnes for something like $400! I paid far less for a weird-looking non-logo staff t-shirt, gray background with black lettering and a hasty pink zigzag across. I can't place the year but I'm making an educated guess: late 80s. Can anyone seeing this write me (afilreis [at] gmail [dot] com) and tell me precisely when? From the mid-80s and earlier (and I'm assuming all the way back), there was simply a staff shirt for the summer, and no other. By now I notice there are various shirts and sweatshirts made, especially for the very end of the summer--and some of these quite informal. Village staffs design an item. VCs of one of the camps get together to do one. So I'm guessing that this speciman is one of the early staff-designed supplemental shirts. Am I right?

At the time of the auction my son wanted it and has worn it several times since. But now he's outgrown it and I'll bring it with me this summer--to give away as a prize to a lucky winner at Challenge Night.

[Ugh, I'm told by several reliable sources that this shirt was indeed the staff shirt that summer. Karin Turer confirms it's '89 or '90. Next we'd like to find out who designed it. Was it you, Peter Swain?]

another Westfield guy

Walking towards us, looking down, is Scott Sanborn of Westfield, NJ. It's Family Camp (late August), 1961 - at the waterfront (obviously). My own sense (just a few years later as a young camper) was of a Westfield corps: the Ketchams, the Barnetts, Scott Sanborn, the Ewens, Jody Davies, later Cindy Titsworth, Peggy Hope, later Martin Kunert (now a film-maker)...the whole gang. Wawayanda was for a time Westfield-dominated, Mississippi State-dominated, Baltimore-dominated and later eastern Ohio-dominated, Woodmere-dominated, and Stevens Point, Wisc.-dominated. (The Westfield-Frost Valley pipeline has slowed somewhat, but there are still Westfielders around, e.g. Annie Gallgian.)

When Halbe Brown and Jane and their kids arrived in '66, they looked for a home to live in from September through May (they didn't live the full year at camp then) and of course they chose to live in....Westfield. Bill MacLeod, a Program Director for several summers in the early 70s, maybe late 60s, was recruited from the ranks of Westfield.... And on it goes.

My hometown of Springfield NJ produced a few notables but we never strung it together the way Westfield did. Mike Marder, Al Inselberg ("Weasel"!), my sister Liane, the Fridkis brothers, Stu Sherman, Cindy Drucker (now Keppler), the two Krop girls, there must have been a few others. And of course Bud Cox, a Westfield guy, taught math for a few years at the middle school in Springfield. He was totally a Westfieldite, but we in Springfield claimed him. I owe Larry Fridkis of Springfield a shout-out: it was Larry who persuaded me to come my first summer and we were in Totem cabin 2 together. Counselor: Tom Fewel...from Mississippi, of course.

FV'er on The Today Show

One of our beloved own, Dawn Helfand Huebner, will be featured on The Today Show on June 18 sometime between the hours of 8 and 9 AM. Tune in!

She'll be on to talk about kids and sleep and her latest book, What to Do When You Dread Your Bed: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Problems with Sleep.

This is Dawn's newest book. The series has really caught on. Her next and sixth book in what has turned out to be a series is being called What to Do When Bad Habits Take Hold: A Kid’s Guide to Overcoming Nail Biting and More, and she's already begun research on a seventh book.

You go, Dawn!

Is it fair to say that Dawn began to learn how to understand kids at Frost Valley? I think there's a very good chance she herself would say yes.

mice vs. counselor

Another item from an old Wawayanda Wasp - this one not quite so old. It dates from 1968. It's a little item written by a Forest camper that summer named Peter Wallburg, and here it is in full:

"In Cabin 7, the unsuspecting counselor J.C. Pony came back from a meeting. He walked into his cabin where two mice came up to him and shook hands. They sat down to talk about getting the eight big brats out of their cabin."

I remember J. C. Pony very well, and I wish I knew where he was today. (Anyone know of him?) Last summer I started telling a somewhat scary story that involves Pony and overnights to the Haunted House site. Folks from that era will remember him for leading Forest in the cheer, "Has Forest got the spirit?!" (To which we replied, "Yeah, man!!") He had a way of cupping his hands over his mouth, leaning backwards and sideways at once, and shouting hoarsely in just such a way so that he never lost an ounce of cool. We would have followed him anywhere....

Now back to Peter Wallburg. I was a Lenape camper that summer ('68) and very vaguely remember the name of this kid from Forest. Vaguely. But I'm going to guess that he's the same Peter Wallburg was is the son of the elder Peter Wallburg who founded Peter Wallburg Photography Studio in Summit, NJ.

first staff member to become a doll

The actor Wentworth Miller--born in England, raised in Brooklyn--is known mostly for his role as Michael Scofield on TV's Prison Break. Less well known is that he was a member of Frost Valley's staff, apparently in Totem village, and apparently for a few years up to 1990.

During the first year Prison Break was aired, a female FV alumna--let's call her R.--was hanging out with another alum, K. K. and R. looked through old camp photo albums. R. had had a big crush on Wentworth and took a nice photo of him at a campfire. The two were admiring this photo when K. noticed that the kid in the photo looked very much like Michael Scofield on the show. R. had already become a big fan of the show and (naturally) had a place in her heart for the actor who plays Scofield. Wentworth both times! At least R. is consistent. The two jumped around in excitement and then went back to marveling at how handsome he'd been even then, at camp.

David Lockwood has pointed out that there's now a Wentworth Miller/Michael Scofield doll (see photo at right), thus making Miller the very first Frost Valley staff member to become a doll. (The first that we know of, anyway. If you know of others, please let holler.)

Hmmmm. The Mike Ford doll. The Sue Goldberg doll. The Bud Cox doll. The Rick Wormeli doll. The Peggy Rub doll. The Rick Cobb doll. Or the generic VC doll. Maybe we're on to something. Manufacture these dolls and sell them in the store....

Well, here is a photo of Wentworth during his Frost Valley days:

Rudy, come & gone

Before computers, the making of the cabin lists before each new two-week session was a major project - complex and almost always done late at night when directors should have been out and around checking on things, dealing with last-minute problems, getting some sleep before the big exchange day/holdover weekend.

I can still remember all the all-nighters I pulled doing this. Usually the memory is about the friends who helped me. Read off the names, check the birthdays, make sure campers who requested each other are together, check to be sure we haven't created a cabin full of lifers next to one full of rookies....and what are the possible bad combos of camper-counselor personalities?

Here you see a photo taken of two staff people assembling the cabin lists (either them or the bus lists - the latter just as crucial for different reasons but less complex an activity) in 1962. The two are Bill Starmer and Rudy Gilbert.

Can you tell where they are working? It's inside the Lake House. This is the small house across the camp road from the boathouse and across the county road from where the old horsebarn used to be. Later Everett Lake lived there, and still later Leslie Black and Doug Kerr.

Rudy Gilbert was a counselor. He went on one of the Canadian trips with Jim Wilkes. Rudy was a student of civil engineering from New Orleans, attending Mississippi State College (which was at the time a feeder school to Wawayanda). This was Rudy's one summer at Frost Valley.

Shortly after that summer (1962) Rudy was murdered on the streets of New Orleans. Lots and lots of fine young people have passed through FV in the summers before and since, and probably few of us remember Rudy Gilbert there that one summer. So why not use this 21st-century-fangled mode (this blog) as a means by which to honor such a person, and (because we still do the same things Rudy did then) to remember him even we don't ourselves remember him?

Bill Starmer, upon seeing this picture after all these years, writes: "You have no idea how often I think about Rudy. We became really close in just a short time. Wonderful future ahead of him. So sad his life had to end so suddenly. One of the few people from those days that still floats through my memory."

So here's to Rudy! And here's to such friendships! Cherish them while you have 'em.

quick, get me a snake reference

Karen Rauter and others up at camp have been looking through old issues of the Wawayanda Wasp, which served as an off-season newsletter (for parents, mostly) and, during the summer, the camp newspaper written and edited by campers. (I was myself a "cub reporter" for the Wasp in '67 and '68.)

Here's a letter printed in an issue of the Wasp dated 1964:

Dear Mom and Dad,
Could you please send my by book on snakes; that tells the difference between poisonous and non-poisonous snakes? A snake just bit me and…………
Love, Clem

I'm less worried about the snake bite (no poisonous snakes at Frost Valley!) than I am about the awful use of the semi-colon in the young fellow's letter home. What kind of grammar were they teaching up in the villages that summer?

what we say we will do

Thanks to Bud Cox, who has kept many of the old camp newsletters. Here's an item from the Wawayanda Wasp issue of 1962, a note in anticipation of a great summer for '63:

What we say we will do – we will do, is not just a slogan at Wawayanda. All of us are victims of exaggerated advertising in the purchase of commodities, and kids are more often the most disappointed when something does not live up to what we expected.

Looking forward to going to camp is almost as much fun as being there. In the process of dreaming, great expectations develop. It is the earnest desire of each member of the staff to meet these expectations and to give that boy or girl all he or she hoped for.

With a full camp and a long waiting list, we do not need to “advertise the camp” with exaggerated promotional materials. We want you as parents to find the experience your son or daughter will have, better then you expected. We the staff have a tradition of 63 years of operation to live up to, and indeed each of us intend to make 1963 the best ever.