The "Letters From Camp" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Sorting through some of the last boxes that I removed from my parents home a few years ago when both mom and dad were admitted to a nursing home and I had to prepare their home to be sold.  Every time I look through the boxes I find something new that sheds a different light on one of them.  Today's find is a few letters that my dad had written to his mother, my "nannan", while at church camp on an island in the Susquehanna River.  Camp Rodgers, located on Schelle Island, was the site of St. James' Episcopal Church's summer camp for the youth of the church as well as other neighborhood churches.  I attended one year before it was destroyed by fire in 1956, but my dad spent quite a few summers on Schelle Island while a member of the St. James Boys Choir.  Tough to visualize your dad as a young boy just as you were at one time, but after finding two letters and enjoying reading them, I saw my dad in an entirely different light.  He was just like me!  His letters were amusing and one, evidently written a few years before the other because of the penmanship, was hilarious.  I read it to Carol and we both had a good laugh.  Thought I'd share them with you so you can see what a young boy visiting a church camp miles away in the middle of a large river thought of life at camp.  I have scanned both letters and they follow.  If you click on the images you will be able to enlarge them to make them easier to read.  I'm sure he wouldn't mind me sharing them with the world, since he enjoyed family humor as much as anyone else in the family.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

A letter when my dad probably went to Camp Rodgers for the first time.

A year or two later.  Penmanship is better and he writes less.  If you're interested, Tiny is the name of his dog and Doris and Tut are his sisters.