Summer Camp
by Norman Reisman
I was one of those fortunate kids who got to attend summer camp each year. The one I went to, Camp Champlain, was located in Westport, New York, on the shores of Lake Champlain. Through the miracle of the internet, several of us former campers have been able to reconnect with each other. About 10 years ago I invited Cookie, Mike, Pete and Tabby over for bagels and lox. They arrived at noon and left at around 7pm. (We finally ran out of bagels.). But we still have a Camp Memories Website that connects all of us.
While attending camp back in the early ’60’s, I had a feeling that some of these kids were special, but I didn’t realize until I started hearing their life stories just how special some of them would become. And sadly, now that it’s so many years later, we’re losing some very wonderful people.
The first one I tried to look up was my baseball/basketball coach, Jimmy Dooley. Of course, he was only maybe 17 or 18 when I first met him, but he had a major influence on me. He was the first person to give me a nickname, Stormin’ Norman. Others have used that over the years on me, but he was the first, and for whatever reason, it gave me a lot of confidence. With a name like Jim Dooley, my first shot at googling him resulted in millions of hits. But his dad was a coach and he was so coach like that I searched for Coach Jim Dooley and quickly found him. It turned out that he was a career high school coach, and had over 700 wins to his credit, which is one of the best records ever in the state of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately though, he had a rare blood condition and he passed away shortly after I found him. But I did send him an email which his wife read to him right before he died, expressing how much he meant to me. As it turns out, scores of former kids that he coached did the same after his death.
More recently Mary Lou Cleave died. She was a child of one of the camp owners and she was in charge of the camp waterfront. At 15 she started taking flying lessons at the local airport. By the 1980’s she wound up becoming one of the first women astronauts logging nearly 11 days in space on 2 space missions.
She was a great athlete, great friend, and great color war captain, as well.
And finally just a few months ago, my former counselor and lifelong Brooklynite, Michael Hechtman passed away. Mike loved Broadway musicals, especially ones in which Frank Loesser wrote the lyrics. (Mike later became a huge Stephen Sondheim fan.). Because of his Loesser love, he wrote wonderful camp plays that were takeoffs on popular shows of the day. My 2 favorites were How to Succeed in Camp Without Really Trying and Macbeth and Dolls. He still remembered every lyric when we’d meet for our regular lunches. I can still hear him singing in his off key voice “Lady Macbeth sit down, sit down you’re rocking the boat” or “I’ve never killed a king before” or “Well friend all I can think of is king, king king, king, king.” He always wanted to become a reporter and wound up becoming the night editor of The New York Post where he gave many young reporters their introductions to journalism. He was famous for his ability to trim down stories. It was said that he could turn a 20 paragraph story into a haiku.
But perhaps the most famous of all of my fellow campers was one whose first name I don’t even remember, at all. He was younger than me and he wasn’t what you’d call a happy camper. He’d write letters home describing his torture which I’m sure inspired his father, Allan Sherman, to write “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh”. Yes, you guessed it. Camp Champlain of Westport, New York, became famous as Camp Granada, and Allan Sherman became “My Son the Folk Singer.”
I’ll end this by giving you my favorite Allan Sherman lyric:
Do not make a stingy sandwich, pile the cold cuts high
Customers should see salami, comin” thru the rye.
PS: Please join us on Monday for a free fascinating short play reading by Judy RABINOR. RSVP: bookdoctor@rcn.com
