It�s 6:34pm on the Eastern Seaboard, and the camp mess hall, the place where all the meals are taken, is silent after the bell next to the kitchen door rings. Dessert has been served�tonight it was small squares of chocolate covered marshmallows, what the cam-pers call �Rocky Road Squares��and the camp director is ready to field announcements from the floor.
�Announcements?!� he cries is a half-query, half-qualifier tone, standing somewhere be-tween any of the identical light-green fruit-juice resistant tables.
A few hands are raised, the earliest of which to put on record the afternoon�s active-ities; a 15�s Lacrosse game, a 13�s Swim Meet, an 11�s Ba-seball game, a 10�s basketball tournament, and an annual 15�s 9-hole golf tournament. Each report is given by a separate cabin counselor, who that afternoon assumed the role of head coach. Each account is then editorialized by the stout, graying director for laughs.
�Tonight�s activities?!� he says in the same tone. The camp director points to a counselor in glasses and a cut-off baseball jersey.
�Open 15�s batting practice after flag-lowering� so come on down.�
�15�s batting at the cage,� the director emphasizes in his booming voice. He points to another raised hand, belong-ing to the director of music at camp, a go-teed 30-something spending his second summer at camp between getting his doctorate in musical theory.
�Anyone with a broken arms or broken spirits,� he says, gesticulating in circles with his forearms, �I�ve got just the thing. We�ll be having an open blues improvisation jam down at the junior lodge. Even if your not hurtin�, come on down.�
�Blues jam,� the director says, letting his eyes scan the crowd for another announce-ment. He spots the South Af-rican wind-sailing and cricket expert at the back table, sport-ing a neon-green cast for a twisted ankle. �Speaking of broken limbs�Simon Warm-ington.�
�OK�� he pauses to laugh and let everyone else laugh as well. �Anyone who wants a lesson in windsurfing, I�ll be down at the boat house after flag-lowering.�
�Wind-surfing with Warming-ton�� the director trails off, trying to continue his sentence. He points to a host of hands from across the room; a 12�s basketball prac-tice, 15�s �Scottish Rules� soccer down on the pitch, 11�s baseball on the small diamo-nd, and a 10�s tennis practice.
It�s 6:51 on the Eastern Seaboard, and the ebb and flow of announcements has subsided for the time being. The bell rings, the boys gather around the flagpole outside and wait for the haunting bugle call of flag-lowering to end� and that was just a weeknight.
Here, nestled between now-here, someplace and Went-worth, New Hampshire, is a small boys camp named for the Indian Tribe that once roamed the hardwood laden valley; Camp Pemigewasset, established: 1908. Far from big cities and bedroom comm-unities, �Pemi,� as it is affectionately known by the nearly 200 campers and staff, is a boys� camp in the full sense�baseball, archery, hiking, log cabins, no candy and just plain fun.
A Map will tell you that Camp Pemigewasset is in northern New Hampshire, an hour�s drive from Dartmouth College, and a three-hour�s drive from Boston. But 3� weeks at camp Pemi will tell you that it�s much closer to the beating heart of this nation�s future�the next generation of our nation�s adults�our future politicians, farmers, steelmakers, businessmen, peacemakers, soldiers and stock brokers.
Perhaps one of the many camp songs, sung by all the boys at �dinner� (lunch) and �supper� (dinner), between the main course and dessert, describes the camp best.
�There are camps scattered over the country, from Canada down to the sea. And some are for boys, and some are for girls, and some for the whole family, but I know a place in New Hampshire, the land of Boston and Maine, where music and laughter, before taps and after, has made me forget all my pain� Pemi, Pemi, that�s the camp for me. Pemi, Pemi, in tranquility. There we sport on land and water, far from Eve�s disturbing daughter. Oh, perhaps we hadn�t �oughter Pemi!� The chorus is then repeated, as it has been for the last 94 years�making Camp Pemigewasset the oldest boys� camp in the country under continuous ownership.
Perhaps that camp director�the stout, graying one; the one that has been the only full time employee of the camp for the last fourteen years; the one that roams the messhall controlling the announcements at breakfast, dinner and supper�Rob Grabill, a 30+ year veteran of the camp, describes the purpose of camp Pemigewasset.
�Pemi, and other summer camps, fill an educational role�an educational void� a unique niche that only a camp could fill� a role in child development that cannot filled by any other entity,� he says, staring out onto the camp through a portrait window in the camp office. He pauses, spins from the right to left in his swivel chair, closes his eyes for a millisecond and then opens them. �Camp isn�t like a vacation�it isn�t fun in the sun. Ya� know, it�s even different than computer camp, and tennis camp and soccer camp. Summer camps teach an ability to live with other people.� He stops, and poses the word �Tolerance,� letting it stand alone for nearly a minute. �Camp teaches community situations that boys will use for the rest of their life� it takes boys and creates �good� men.�
And the good reviews just pour in.
Matthew Norman, a sixth year camper from Westchester, NY, says that camp Pemi has given him a �second home� that he �will always remember.� �You can be yourself, you can do what you want to do,� he says as he sits in a fold-up lawn chair outside his �Senior 3� cabin, simultaneously trying to read a magazine on aviation�the very point being that for most Pemi campers comments like require no rehearsal or thought, Mr. Norman lives those words every day of the summer for seven weeks.
Tim Walker, a first year camper from Greenwich, CT, but, like Mr. Norman, still fifteen years old. He recounts the day he arrived at camp. �Welcoming,� he says emphatically and stops. He looks over the side of the cabin porch and into the falling sun over the glassy lake. �As soon I came I was given a tour around the entire camp,� he says with a smile, still gazing glassy-eyed out over the lake.
And for Tim, �teamwork� is an important new aspect of Pemi. �I�ve gained invaluable experience in working with teams.�
The Four Docs
To add to the camping void in Education, history is also taught at Pemi�a history of the camp. The lessons are taught as the entire camp processes solemnly into the �Senior Lodge,� a large long log cabin at the heart of camp, as the resident music director plays a piano concerto in D Minor on the Steinway next to the podium on the stage. When everyone is seated, the camp bugler harks the haunting major thirds of a �C� Major chord on a old military issue bugle out the window. The bugler holds out the last note, and lets it fall and fade away into the summer air. A few chairs squeak through a fleeting silence while the speaker for that night�Rob Grabill�rises slowly from behind the podium.
�Hello,� he says with a wide smile that stretches across his face as wide as his glasses. �How many of you are first time campers or counselors.�
A smattering of boys and men through-out the audience raise their hands eagerly. Grabill nods in approval, the smile still plastered on his face, as though he�s about to laugh.
�Good,� he says. �After I retire�well, if I ever retire from this job, I�ll either be a soccer coach or a preacher.� He moves out from behind the podium and starts to walk down the aisle set between his usual soccer players and the rank and file chairs set like pews in a church.
Rob Grabill then starts to discuss the founding and history of Pemi. He tells of the four original founders of Camp Pemi, �The Four Docs:� Doc Gar, Doc Win, Doc Nick and Doc Reed�four Oberlin College graduates and soon-to-be teachers�the very men who first owned Pemi and have made it the oldest family-owned camp in the country. Rob Grabill tells of when the Four Docs were first trying to find a suitable spot for camp. �It was the dead of winter,� he says, arms bent on the podium, eyes wandering through the crowd, �and the four docs get off the train in Wentworth wearing their white linen suits�. They took a sleigh to the camp sight, and they looked out on a frozen Lower Baker Pond. They trudged through four feet of snow that day, and when they got back on the train, they had decided to have Pemi be on this very spot. That summer, they started building the first cabins.�
The director then casts a stare that goes gradually from the front of the room, where the youngest campers sit, then farther back, where the older campers sit, then to the back row, where Thomas Reed, Sr. the eighty-something year old current owner and son of Doc Reed, sits with his wife at the end of the aisle, and then the director looks up at the mantle on the back wall. The campers eyes follow his, so that soon everyone is looking at an old black and white photograph of four young men in Oberlin Letter sweaters�the four docs.
For Pemi, the history is one of the most treasured aspects.
The director returns to his speech. He continues to tell a history he has memorized to every detail. �Once, this was a protestant camp and every Sunday Meeting was a church service.�
But make no mistake, camp Pemi is no longer Protestant or religious in any way. Every year, during the later weeks of camp, there is a whiffleball team compromised solely of Jewish campers and counselors named �The All-Stars of David.� Every Sunday, a select group of devout Catholics ride a bus to a nearby church for mass.
Jake Fauver, a fifth year camper from Chatham, NJ, is one of those devout Catholics. As he sits on the porch of his cabin, he can list reasons why he likes the camp easily. �Diverse activities, long-lasting friendships and the beauty,� but he has something more to say. �Camp teaches�� but his thoughts are derailed by a faint bugle. He waits a moment to return his train of thought to the tracks. �Camp teaches me a love for diversity, and it is an escape from prejudice.�
While it may be an escape from prejudice for Jake, it is an open door to a diverse group of people for one staff member.
Jeff Greene has worked at camp Pemigewasset for four years as the much-loved Tennis director. He stands only five foot eight, but his presence is conveyed through a characteristic scratchy voice anyone could recognize instantaneously.
At an early age, Mr. Greene�s parents sent him away to sleep-away camp at a very early age. �From ages 5� to fourteen, I attended camp in upstate New York.�
Greene, a tennis coach at Manhatt-enville College in Westchester, NY, continued to spend summers at camps as a tennis coach after a stint in tournament tennis. With six years of directing tennis at camp Winnebago in Maine under his belt, Greene came to Pemi in 1999.
�Camp has given me the opportunity to be more than a simple man,� he says as he�s sweeping the five red clay courts situated between the messhall and the Senior Lodge. �It has pushed me, and it will do the same for other boys. Summer camp teaches Independence. It is also a place where I can meet new and different people�people I wouldn�t meet in everyday life.�
When Rob Grabill is told that one of his campers thinks the camp is an �escape from prejudice,� and that one of his staff members thinks the camp is a place for meeting new and different people, he responds quickly without missing a beat.
�Yes,� he says emphatically, closing his eyes. �It is, it really is an escape from prejudice and a good place to meet different people. Prejudice is not tolerated at this camp�not by the boys, not by the counselors and not by me. When a boy says something out of place, somebody is gonna� say �Hey,� and fix the problem right away.�
The one problem, Grabill does admit, is that it is hard for prejudice to exist at Camp Pemi. �At camp, the whole idea is to create good men. All types of good men. We have cross-age: our camp ranges from ages 8 to 15. We have role-models in our older campers, and we have great counselors as role-models as well, but�� he trails off. There is a hard rain outside that comes pattering down on the roof of the office. He looks out the window again, then turns back and speaks confidently. �Camp needs to be more than upper-middle class white kids. Camping opportunities need to be open to every income-level and every cultural facet and every ability�camps for the blind and the deaf and the disabled. The American Camping Association, the organization that accredits camps in the United States, tells us that camping is growing. There are demographics that tell us this. And camping plainly needs to be for more than upper-middle class white kids.�
Grabill then elucidates that these same points will be what makes them viable in the future years.
So here, far from bedroom communities and big cities, the observer can find the future of America nestled between somewhere, nowhere and Wentworth, New Hampshire. Right before every meal, all the boys gather on the porch outside the messhall to wait for the bugle to blow and the doors to open upon their feast. A walk among them will reveal boys with a host of vocational aspirations, and a man who watches over them, every day of the summer for seven weeks�Rob Grabill.
When he is asked by he likes the camp, and why he returns each year to a predictable routine, he grins, puts his hands on his knees, and looks at the floor. �Well,� he says bringing his head back up, �one becomes fond of one�s life work.� He stops to laugh, but shakes off any hint of a grin to speak confidently. �My passion for Camp Pemi is not equaled by anyone anywhere for anything.�
Maybe FDR was right.