Sentimental return to Adirondack scout camp

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July 27, 2008

Eagle Island celebrates 70 summers of adventure

By KIM SMITH DEDAM The Press Republican Sun Jul 27, 2008, 05:45 AM EDT

The tawny waters of Upper Saranac Lake rolled lazily against beaches shaded by tall pines.

From a distance, the slow, rhythmic slapping and the hum of motorboats drifted on an occasional breeze.

But on Eagle Island, when the burbling motor of an arriving boat cut under the boathouse roof, spontaneous singing erupted from the dock.

Bright melodies softened in the sultry summer air.

"We'll sing you in, we'll sing you out, to you we'll raise a mighty shout; Hail, hail, the gang's all here, and welcome to Eagle Isle!"

TRAGEDY TURNED AROUND

Levi P. Morton, former U.S. vice president and governor of New York, built his Great Camp here as a private summer retreat for his family -- his second wife, Anna, and five daughters -- in 1903; since then it has been called just Eagle Island Camp.

Old news stories say it was named for the eagles nesting here.

Architect William Lincoln Coulter designed the buildings' rustic porches and stick cornice work, trimmed in wooden diamonds.

Morton used the camp less after his daughter Lena died in Paris after an appendix operation in 1904. He sold it to Henry Graves Jr., heir to the Atlas Portland Cement Company, in 1910. The Graves's visits ended after an automobile crash in March of 1922 took the life of Henry Graves III and seriously injured his brother Duncan.

The family gave the island to the Girl Scout Council of Greater Essex and Hudson Counties of New Jersey in 1937, a gift dedicated to the merriment of children and a legacy preserved in stories still told at the end of every camp session.

Carefully preserved, the 32-acre property includes 11 original Great Camp buildings, including a dining hall, "Mrs. Morton's" lodge, a boathouse and guest cottage.

The property was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2004.

Since 1938, the Girl Scout Council has continuously operated summer camp here for upwards of 140 girls age 9 to 17 in three sessions, July through August.

AWAKENED MEMORIES

This landmark 70th summer season began with a return.

More than 80 former campers ages 19 to 86 gathered to sing, swim, sail and reawaken Eagle Island memories.

Dorothy "Dart" Emerson, who celebrated her 86th birthday at the reunion, was here in 1938 when the camp first opened.

She was the first waterfront director and recalled the guarded reception they had from neighbors.

"They were Rockefellers, Colgates and Carnegies," Emerson said with a lift of eyebrows. "We had some public-relations work to do, of course -- here was this camp for girls right in the middle of the lake."

Sundays, Eagle Island Camp dispatched an entire choir paddling over for weekly services on nearby Chapel Island.

"We went by sailboat, by canoe, by rowboat, any way we could get there," Emerson said. "It didn't take long before they decided these are OK people."

Emerson stood in the dining pavilion, an eight-sided building wrapped in glass windows, and noticed how little had changed.

An antique chime affixed to the wall still calls girls to dinner.

Five or six chairs sat before a gaping stone fireplace yet warm with coals from a morning fire.

"It's something isn't it?" she said, her grin mischievous.

The New York Times 105 years ago boasted how Morton's "new camp" on Eagle Island had a dining room "octagonal in form, finished in peeled spruce" with glass pane windows and "a striking feature in the ceiling, where an umbrella, so called, has been constructed."

The room's ceiling does resemble a parasol popped open to keep the rain out.

Emerson opened the dining room door leading outside to a long, covered rustic walkway that forms a bridge to the lodge house.

The several lodge rooms are situated around a great room guarded by rows of the heads of mighty antlered beasts.

A gigantic moose stares from high above a great fireplace.

"That moose gave me nightmares," Emerson said. "We heard it was the third-largest moose ever shot in New York state."

TREASURED TALES

Mary Ratchford Hesselgrave, who first attended camp here 50 years ago, was one of the Mariners, an expert sailing group of Girl Scouts.

Their Eagle Island realm was the historic boathouse, now raised onto dry land for careful preservation and used for arts and crafts.

When it rained, Hesselgrave said, counselors would tell the girls to don bathing suits and gather in the great room, where (they claimed) the swim instructor was going to sit atop the moose head, set a stopper in the floor and fill the room with water.

There was no flood, of course, but the rainy-day activity called "swimming in the lodge" meant folk dancing. The ruse fooled many a first-year camper, Hesselgrave said with a laugh.

"I used to think the moose head would come down on us with all the dancing," Emerson chuckled.

As camp director years later, she had the giant moose head double-bolted to the masonry.

But there was nothing stuffy about the best of times preserved in these rooms.

"We're the same people," Hesselgrave said. "We know all these songs we haven't sung in 50 years, and we can still sing them together."

And the girls didn't just experience a camp tradition.

"I feel more like it's part of me," Hesselgrave said.

The women remembered the real sense of freedom they gained wearing shorts all summer, when dresses were the social rule for girls in the 1940s and 1950s.

They sang a special song when a counselor or camper had to dress up to visit parents off the island.

"The girl in the skirt had to get up in the middle of the dining room and dance," Emerson said, breaking into the song.

Other voices rose spontaneously with a rousing chorus: "Don't you look swell."

Then laughter.

"We hated to leave the island."

NEVER NEVER LAND

Toweling off after a swim, Kathi Quigley, Emily Novick, Louie Moore and Ginny Hildebrand jabbered excitedly walking back to the boathouse porch recalling many summers they spent together, starting in 1958.

"Oh, that's the Eagle Island smell," Norick said, "Hot pine."

"We learned we didn't just climb mountains," Moore said, "we could move them."

"It's our Never Never Land," Hildebrand said, throwing her arms open wide.

Starry skies, bug juice, 10-day canoe trips, mountain hikes and boatloads of Camp Dudley boys waving as they motored by shaped the women's lives with an instinctive sense of wonder.

Nan Greenwald, a camper from 1953 to 1961, attended the reunion with daughter Elyse, now 25, a camper in the 1990s, who was back visiting with camp buddy Tucker Hirsch, 25.

"There were no other choices," Elyse said, grinning at her mother. "I started coming here when I was 9."

Even getting here was an adventure.

"We had to drive out of the city then take a boat to the island," Hirsch said. "Places like Never Never Land always have special directions, you know: Follow the second star on the right and straight on 'til morning.'"

Eagle Island traditions are forged in knots, with sailing lessons at Mariner's Rock where the swimming levels marked by Red Caps and Blue Caps and White Caps turned out to be building blocks for life.

They still are, said Jan Lilien, CEO of the Girl Scout Council of Greater Essex and Hudson Counties in New Jersey.

"We have kids that have never been out of the city come here," she said. "It changes their lives."

The Rededication Ceremony that has ended every two-week camp session since 1938 retells the island's legacy as an epic poem.

The historic tale unfolds around a roaring campfire under the stars, and campers remember it well.

Filled with song, the story carries a message -- the hope that children always find happiness at Eagle Island.

The returning campers rededicated their land anew.

"We saw the bright heavens and the solemn forests, the rushing streams and silvery lakes; and while we wondered at all these, God's treasures, we forgot ourselves and understood each other better," the poem reads in part.

"Once more the wooded isle rings with childish laughter. Once again the hills resound with glad and joyous song. Lake waters laugh along the rocky shores. Now Childhood, who lived once upon this isle, through love for children, comes back to live forever in Eagle Island Camp."

kdedam@pressrepublican.com

NOT JUST FOR SCOUTS
Eagle Island Camp is open to all girls, scouts or not.
And the Girls Scout Council of Greater Essex and Hudson Counties, based in Montclair, N.J., is creating new adventures, opening the camp to adults and families.
This year, a Restore Eagle Island Weekend is open to the public from Aug. 21 through 24 for both men and women. The cost of $295 per person includes three nights' stay, all meals, sailing, paddling and unique special events.
A family program is in the offing, with Women's Weekend open to all next year.
For more information or reservations, call (973) 746-8200 or 891-0928.