[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, and as we said, segment two, each of these hours in the 11:00 AM to noon fundraising party on the Brian Lehrer Show is going to be a second round of one of our most fun or interesting call-ins of the year, and today, it's your most memorable moment from summer camp. Maybe you caught our segment on the origins of Jewish summer camp earlier this month with Sandra Fox, who recently released a book on the topic. When it aired, we asked you to call in with stories from your own time at Jewish summer camps in particular to go along with the theme of that book. Today, we're going to expand it, so camp in the United States as we learned in that history is, to a meaningful degree, a Jewish culture creation, but many of us from all backgrounds have gone to summer camp sleepaway camp of one kind or another during our childhood. Listeners, what's your most enduring memory from summer camp? I can see people are already calling in and there are some wild ones here. It's 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. That's not our donor line, that's our call-in line, and we'll take your calls on your most unforgettable moments from summer camp right after this.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now to your most memorable moments from sleepaway camp. I see that two of the callers on our lines have the same memory. I don't know if they were the same year or the same camp, but it's a pretty rare thing, so we're going to put each of them on. Should we put them on together, Juliana? Can we do that? This is Matthew on Roosevelt Island on line two and Michael in Jackson Heights. Let's see, we may need to do them one at a time. There we go. Michael in Jackson Heights on line nine. Matthew, are you there?

Matthew: I am here.

Brian Lehrer: Michael, are you there?

Michael: I am indeed.

Brian Lehrer: Matthew, you first.

Matthew: Well, first of all, I want to thank you and WNYC for being my first contact with the world every morning. Much appreciated.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much.

Matthew: My memory is as a 12-year-old, 1958, I was going to camp up in Beacon, New York. Perhaps Michael remembers the name of the camp. I think it was [unintelligible 00:02:41], but I could be mistaken. Beacon New York is where Pete [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: Well, we don't know if you went to the same camp, but go ahead, Matthew.

Matthew: Oh, okay. There were a lot of camps around there. Pete Seeger lived in Beacon, New York, and at that time, he had been blacklisted because of his politics. It was a time of enormous blacklisting. He was no longer with his folk group, the Weavers. He had time on his hands, and he would spend some of that time on the weekends at our camp making music out on the lawn, and people would come out there with their guitars and their banjos and make music with Pete Seeger. Now, at the time, I was playing the piano. There was no piano out on the lawn. When I got home, I asked my folks for a guitar, my first Gibson guitar, and some lessons at Brooklyn College, and that was 60 years ago, and I've been playing ever since,-

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

Matthew: - and so I owe a great vote of thanks to Pete Seeger. I've been a member of his organization, the Clearwater Society, which is trying to clean up the Hudson River ever since.

Brian Lehrer: Wow, what a great story. Matthew, stay there though because let's listen to what Michael's story is, and then maybe you two will compare notes a little bit. Michael, go ahead.

Michael: [chuckles] Yes. Well, hi. Michael, a proud sustaining member of WNYC.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Michael: I actually grew up on Roosevelt Island, so there's all sorts of cosmic connections with Matthew at this point.

Matthew: Oh, for goodness sake.

Michael: I saw Pete Seger in the '80s when I went to Camp Thoreau, which was across the Hudson River, at the time, it was in Waco, it was in Waco and Pine Bush, so kind of Hudson Valley area. Camp Thoreau, where I went to for 10 years, was this really lefty, progressive summer camp that really had these great values that were instilled about social justice and progressive values and kindness. This time that Pete Seeger came and sang at our camp was just this pinnacle moment of just being so inspired by him and the activism that was combined with fun and charm. He was so wonderful and so warm, and then actually, what we did was then another time, the whole camp went to Beacon and he played right in front of the Clearwater, and it was this whole thing about cleaning up the river and he was singing, "Sailing up, sailing down, up and down the river, sailing on." Then, we did some cleanup work. Pete Seeger, they broke the mold with him, and when I talk with my friends from summer camp who are now, of course, we're all adults, this camp and the experience of Pete Seeger and the experience of those values are still with us no matter what we're doing with our lives, so it's indelible.

Brian Lehrer: Wow, and decades apart because Matthew's was in the '50s, his encounter with Pete Seeger at summer camp, and yours was in the '80s. Matthew, anything you want to ask Michael or say a last thing here real quick?

Matthew: Well, I should mention that I was at Pete Seeger's 90th birthday party at Madison Square Garden. It was Pete Seeger and me and about 40,000 of his best friends. He's been my hero ever since.

Brian Lehrer: He said, "Matthew, great to see you. Camp." Michael, a quick last word on Pete Seeger's influence on you from that one encounter at summer camp.

Michael: Well, I think Pete Seeger, it's possible to speak truth to power and to advocate for social justice and also be accessible to kids and to be fun and to be warm. I was so inspired by that and I try and do that in my life or be that way, so let's bring Pete Seeger's energy into our lives at this really difficult time.

Brian Lehrer: Michael in Jackson Heights and Matthew in Roosevelt Island, thank you for calling up. How about that? Pete Seeger summer camp memories from three decades apart from two callers. Kate in Long Beach, you're on WNYC. Hi, Kate.

Kate: Hi, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What's your summer camp memory?

Kate: All right. Well, my memory is not as lovely as that Pete Seeger memory, but I was seven years old and my two older siblings were going to 4-H Camp and I begged my parents to let me go as well thinking that I was big and could handle it. [chuckles] I remember being terrified every night laying in the cabin. One night there was an enormous thunderstorm and lightning cracks, and I just wet the sleeping bag and I was totally embarrassed and soaked. Of course, they were great and the counselors were very nice to me, but needless to say, I never went back to sleepaway camp. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Oh, wow. Wow, that thunderstorm traumatized you to that degree. That's the opposite of a story that I think we hear a lot, which is kids are like, "I don't want to go away to camp. I don't know what it's going to be like. I don't want to go away and have to sleep in a bunk in the middle." Then, they get there and they're like, "Oh, my parents aren't here. Wow, we're having a blast." Kate, thank you very much for sharing that. How about that? The thunderstorm that you'll never forget. Happy in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Happy.

Happy: Hi, there.

Brian Lehrer: What's your summer camp memory?

Happy: My experience in camp-

Brian Lehrer: Yes?

Happy: -was catching my first rattlesnake on the upper ball field during rest hour when it was supposed to be bunked resting, but the call of nature was stronger and I went out every day when I could looking to see what was out there. I've caught milk snakes, I've caught garden snakes, and most of the local varieties in addition to the occasional snapping turtle [unintelligible 00:08:44] turtle at the waterfront, and about [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: Now, let me ask you real quick, where'd you grow up? Where were you living as a kid when you went to that camp?

Happy: Plattsburgh, New York.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, you grew up in Plattsburgh?

Happy: Yes, I did.

Brian Lehrer: You were already living at Adirondacks, maybe woodsy kind of area.

Happy: We were on the border of a swamp, so there was lots of stuff as a kid to study in its own environment. I also [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Since you're in Manhattan now, I was going to say, if you were a city kid growing up, I would imagine that the first impulse upon encountering a rattlesnake would've been to run away, not to try to catch it, but maybe it's because you grew up in Plattsburgh that you went for that rattler.

Happy: Well, that was my counselor's reflex, was to run away or make me go away and let the snake go far away from people.

Brian Lehrer: Happy, thank you very much for that story. Kathleen in Atlanta, you're on WNYC. That one made you laugh, Kathleen?

Kathleen: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hello.

Kathleen: Yes. Hi.

Brian Lehrer: What's your summer camp memory?

Kathleen: Those stories are so amazing. I am a sustaining member.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Kathleen: Well, I grew up on Long Island. I was born in Brooklyn, and my father and mother moved out to Suffolk County in Huntington, and it was really rural. There was RSD as [unintelligible 00:10:26] but anyways, my story is my best girlfriend on the small little state that we lived, we went to Girl Scout camp, and it was somewhere on Long Island, and Long Island is wonderful. It used to be beautiful with all the hills and the roads and everything, but we were [inaudible 00:10:47] [crosstalk]--

Brian Lehrer: In defense of people on Long Island today, they would say it's still beautiful, the hills are still there, it depends where you are.

Kathleen: Oh yes, that's right. I used the past tense, that's right. Okay.

Brian Lehrer: [laughs]

Kathleen: I apologize for that. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Some of my best friends and relatives are on Long Island. Anyway, go ahead.

Kathleen: Well, me too, yes. I still have those. Anyway, her name is Suzanne, and me, I was named Kathy, and we packed up and went up there, but the funny story about it is, we had to put up our own tent, but Susan and I were relegated to cleaning out the outhouses, and as I recall, we only had one outhouse and it was painted pink, and it was really stinky. We had to put [unintelligible 00:11:46] in there and put vinegar in there every day.

Brian Lehrer: If you went to a more pampered camp,-

Kathleen: I know. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: - I guess the help would have done it, but because it was Girl Scout camp, this was part of your character development. Would you put it that way?

Kathleen: I think so. I still respect the Girl Scouts and all of that wonderful thing. I was a Girl Scout leader later on with my own daughter, but we never went back to that camp ever. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Kathleen, thank you very much.

Kathleen: We just bicycled to a pool two miles away. Anyway, but you're very welcome.

Brian Lehrer: No doubt Long Island is filled with a lot more strip malls and stuff like that than it was then. [chuckles] Thank you very much. One more. Laurel in Greenwich Village, you're on WNYC. Hey, Laurel.

Laurel: Hi, Brian. I wanted to recall my fantastic summers at Camp Kinderland, which is the legendary secular Jewish humanist camp started during the Labor Movement, which is celebrating its 100th birthday this year. I had the most blissful summers there, and we also did all these fantastic things like put on plays about the triangle fire, celebrating Hiroshima day by dressing in white and placing white flowers on the lake where we get to swim twice a day, celebrating Holocaust Memorial Day. I just learned so much there and also just had the best time swimming and singing songs like You Can't Scare Me, I'm Sticking to the Union. I'm glad to have been fully indoctrinated that way, and now my daughter's going there.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, awesome. That still exists, that camp?

Laurel: Yes. Its 100th birthday. It still exists, and my daughter is going to spend her second summer there. She had the best time ever modern dancing and swimming in the lake and singing the same songs that I sang like Dona Dona, learning a Yiddish word every day. Camp Kinderland is incredible, and we're so happy to have our legacy there.

Brian Lehrer: What an unusual thing to have that combination of politics and fun, huh.

Laurel: Yes. I think I took it for granted. I also went to PS3, which is in the West Village, in the '80s, which was also very political in that way where we wrote letters to Ronald Reagan and did arts and crafts and it was a continuation of that experience. The combination was beautiful. You lay in your bunk at night and maybe have some scary thoughts about nuclear war, but you're also getting bit by mosquitoes and having the best summer ever.

Brian Lehrer: Which to fear more, the dilemma at summer camp, nuclear war or mosquito bites?

[laughter]

Brian Lehrer: Laurel, thank you very much, and thanks to all of you who called with your unforgettable memories of summer camp. Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Coming up next, part three of our 11:00 A.M to noon fundraising party for this hour. More things to do in New York this summer. Stay with us.

Copyright © 2023 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.