A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Camp – 15 c—SOME BEGINNINGS

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Camp – 15 c—SOME BEGINNINGS

We would have our team meetings that first year in the “sugar shack.”   When we first began at Sherwood, I was the Coordinator and led the singing at campfires. I remember making all kinds of facial antics singing the Austrian Yodeling song and Little Red Caboose.   It was fun for me.   I loved being with the campers.

Every year I would drive our little white VW “bug” to use mostly for going up and down from Sherwood Forest.   It was small and very maneuverable on the dirt roads.  One year when Nancy was graduating from High School, I drove the VW back home to Santa Rosa during Orientation Week.  I was going to go down one day and come back up the next day.   Don MacInnes, the Mission Area Education Consultant at the time, would come up each year to help with the staff training of curriculum.   He was going to take those two days while I was gone.  I planned to be back for the closure of Orientation Week.  My niece, Janet, who was on staff that year, went with me.  On the way back to camp after the graduation, the VW konked out on us in Los Banos.   It would take a couple of days to repair it there.   Ted came down from Calvin Crest and we pulled the VW back to camp.  Obviously, I missed the last day of Orientation Week.  Don closed it up for me. One of our staff men was handy as a mechanic and he got The Bug running again.

            As the years progressed and we added more camps and the number of campers grew, we hired young adults to coordinate the different camps.   We were running several Primary, Junior, Junior High, Outpost, Senior High, AIM (Assistants in Mission) during the summer.   In addition, we had College and Family Conferences including programs for Pre-Schoolers.