Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Flashback to 1981and Beyond With Betsy Candler Harvey

Camp Thunderbird Alumni Blog Post

Betsy Candler Harvey

On the first day of 3rdsession of 1977, I arrived for the first time at Camp Thunderbird as a rather shy, bookish just-turned-13-year-old camper. Although my younger sister and older cousins were also campers that session, I otherwise didn’t know a soul and was horribly homesick, despite my cabinmates and counselors being fun and friendly. My senior counselor, in particular, was kind and patient and spent significant one-on-one time listening to and advising me. Nevertheless, I remained very homesick and recall retreating to my cabin to be alone in the middle of a Saturday night camp dance, triggering a “lost camper” search. I’ll never forget the evident relief on the face of my counselor when she tore through the cabin door to find me lying on my bunk reading a Tiger Beat magazine my mother had sent in a care package.

Despite this inauspicious start to my camp career, something happened to me after those three weeks in the summer of 1977. My camp experience had changed me. It made me more confident. It made me more outgoing. It made me more willing to take risks. After having been a camper again in 1978 and 1979 and a CIT in 1980, I worked as a junior counselor in a cabin with the littlest campers (6-7 years old) and on the sailing staff the summer of 1981. As much as I loved and was passionate about camp, fostering friendships with people with whom I keep in touch to this day, I wasn’t a particularly effective first-year counselor. After I returned to school, I received a letter from Camp Director Bill Climer asking to meet with me during the off-season to talk about how I could “up my game” for the coming summer. Boy, did that correspondence light a fire under me and make me determined to prove what a good counselor I could be!

Fast forward to the end of summer 1985: I had just finished my 9thand final summer at Thunderbird, this time as the Girls’ Camp Head Counselor. I had spent three years on the sailing staff from 1981-83, and I served as a Head Counselor Assistant the summer of 1984, all as a cabin counselor for the older girls in Cabin 33 (coincidentally, the same cabin in which my counselor found me during the lost camper search in 1977). 

Camp continued to mold me as a person during my years on the staff. I continued to become more outgoing, developing leadership and team-building skills as I worked and played with my fellow counselors. Over my five years as a TBird staff member, I made literally lifelong friends with whom I laughed (and laughed and laughed) and cried and played and goofed off and worked (and yes, misbehaved, from time to time). To this day, my best friends from my high school and college years are not necessarily my schoolmates, but my camp friends, with whom I:

1.    Sat in the dining hall on Friday nights writing newsy letters to campers’ parents,
2.    grilled burgers on Wednesday nights so the dining hall ladies could have the night off, 
3.    made runs to Cav’s (the convenience store across the street from camp) on “short nights” off to eat sub sandwiches at 10 p.m., 
4.    went to the laundromat in Charlotte on days off,
5.    cruised in “tenders” around campers in Sunfish when there wasn’t a breeze to be had on Lake Wylie, 
6.    administered eardrops at “flagpole”, 
7.    wrote and performed silly skits (which we thought were brilliant), 
8.    policed the cedar trees surrounding the Older Girls’ Camp on the way back to the cabin after evening program to make sure no would-be Romeos were lurking,
9.    watched fireworks over Lake Wylie on the 4thof July, 
10.  skied in the pre-dawn hours before Reveille, when the lake was placid and glassy,
11.  ate those wonderful sweet rolls on Sunday mornings at breakfast,
12.  delivered cleaning supplies and inspected cabins as Head Counselor Assistants,
13.  sat on the banks of the athletic fields outside our cabins after Taps to decompress after a busy camp day,
14.  chaperoned a bunch of sweaty, sticky campers on excursions to Carowinds, 
15.  danced to James Taylor’s “You’ve Got a Friend” at the end of every camp dance in Johnson Hall, and
16.  experienced hundreds of small, special moments that I’ve long ago forgotten but which nevertheless molded me as a person.

My own children, now grown, were never campers at Thunderbird, although we enjoyed going to Labor Day Family Camp for many years when they were young. However, my 17-year-old niece, Grace Williams, has been spending her summers at camp since she was the age of those littlest campers I counseled in 1981. She was a CIT last year, and will be a first year junior counselor - on the sailing staff, no less, like her aunt - the summer of 2019. 

In my 55 years, no place on earth has been more special to me than Camp Thunderbird. I can honestly say that I would not be the same person I am today if it weren’t for my camp experiences and my camp friendships. My hope for Grace, which I am certain will come true, is that she will make lifelong friends and memories as a Thunderbird counselor – just like her Aunt Betsy. 










1 comment:

  1. Nicely remembered and put into words and pictures Until, of course, that last one. My goodness. So OOL. ����

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