Below is a letter from the head of the Girl Scouts of Rolling Hills Council. It explains why this action is being pursued. If you have questions, please contact Marilyn. If you would know of a way to save camp, then please contact others who are willing to help. Use the email list on the staff page. Or contact the board of directors or Marilyn.
Following the official letter, are response letters from former staff members and campers. Would you like to share your feelings on the matter? Then email: dkellyanne@excite.com with your response. It will be posted within a few weeks later. Thanks for your input!
Letter from Marilyn at Council
Hello,
I should have been prepared for the questions about selling the camp. I'll do my best to answer.
First of all it is true that finding that location and raising the money to buy it and to put the facilities in place was a huge job and a real labor of love for the Board of Directors then, and for all of the volunteers that were involved. In fact the council was under the gun from Girl Scouts of the USA to have a resident camp so that they could receive a full charter. But times change. In the past 8 or 9 years GSUSA has been advising councils to review their property holdings and assess their value to the overall program so that monies are not being diverted to property instead of services to girls. In our case HV has been "under discussion" since I came to work here in 1981. Many, many people love the property and are heart broken over the prospect of selling it. Others see it as too costly to maintain and too far away to enjoy.
In addition there were so many years of deferred maintenance that upkeep for the past 7-9 years has been a big expenditure. Expenses, I must say, that we were willing to incur because we thought that they would increase attendance. Even though registrations have increased over the past three years so have expenses and summer camp, (six weeks of fees in and expenses out), still shows a loss. The loss has decreased to two or three thousand dollars but it does not include the twelve month costs to maintain the property, make improvements, pay taxes, pay the ranger, and cover unanticipated events like a caterpillar infestation or major repairs to the dam. Then too, there are issues regarding our ability to staff the program and the risks involved with running a program so far from home base. Parental attitudes have changed significantly since we bought HV. Working parents are not as anxious to have their children away from home. Concerns over abuse and possible molestation have increased as well. Many of the parents of our current Girl Scouts have no scouting background themselves and view some of our practices with skepticism and anger. Sounds weird, but many of today's parent do not want their daughters to have to try new foods or to be told when they can swim and what color cap they can wear.
Our current Board reviewed all of the decisions of past task-groups who wrestled the HV question. They looked at the financials covering a ten year period. They reviewed the personnel issues that have occurred and the parent complaints. Then they looked at our current levels of growth and the projections for how the population here is expected to grow. They felt that if we are to meet the demands that face us as we continue to grow that we need (a) and endowment to secure our financial future, (b) another camp property in our jurisdiction that would accommodate the huge demand for day camp and could offer a modified resident experience, (c) and that this property could have a year round role as a program site. They are also concerned about helping parents find a resident program for their daughter's if they so desire. They would like to see some partnerships between councils and a sharing of resident camp facilities that already exist within the State.
As to price for the property, we hope to sell it for somewhere between two and three million dollars. the Board has said that if we do not get close to that range we will withdraw it from the market. We are in the process of hiring an appraisal firm to review the property and help us with a final determination of price.
Wow! That was a lot. I hope that this answers the first round of questions and I'm sure that these answers will help to develop more questions. I'm only too happy to answer what I can so tell your friends that questions are OK.
Marilyn Seigel
mseigel@girlscouts-rh.org
Reactions to the Sale by former scouts and staff
Rebecca Sage "Thumper/Houston": Scout from 1986-1991, Staff 1993,1996-1998
To all who now me and some who may not, the sale of camp comes as quite a shock, I mean I always new that they would threaten it but I always thought that it was as a way to scare us when we did something that they were not entirely happy with. It just baffels my mind that anyone could sell a place that has shaped so many young minds and young scared girls into strong independant women. I mean I went first as a 7 year old who's parents were devorcing and left a 21 year old sure of herself and ready to face the world or at least deal with it better.
I want everyone to know that what ever i can do i will I wish that I had the money to buy the camp, but I just don't have that spare two mill this week. I don't have much, but i feel that I owe my sole to that 1200 acers in PA and to all of you who helped shape me into the woman that I am today.
Feel free to contact me for what ever my name now is Beca Jones, it was Beca Sage my address is: 5329 Old Pearce Rd Wake Forest, NC 27587 my phone is 919 554 1576 my email is rsjhouston@att.net
I don't know what I can do but I will do what I can. I hope to see all of you at the reunion, I have missed so many of you over the years that we have not seen each other, not a day goes by that I don't think of you all. Please write, call or email I often feel out of the camp loop way down here in the middle of the south
I love you all
beca sage jones/thumper or houston
Karen Meyer Markley: camper 1971, CIT 1972-1973, Waterfront Staff 1974-1976
I was so excited to get the note in the mail about the Hidden Valley Camp Reunion 2000 - I really enjoyed the last two reunions and it was nice to know that Patsy, Tedra and Kelly volunteered to organize it and get this all on a web site! It's such a nice feeling to be welcomed back to camp and be remembered by those who also went to camp over 25 years ago. I was especially moved by the first reunion when I saw that the camp looked just as great as it was when I had worked there and saw how many more girls had worked there since then and had grown to love the place too. Of course meeting up with the girls I knew well from camp was very special too. I proudly showed my husband and our 2 young boys around the camp that I loved - we had a great time and the singing by the campfire really touched our hearts. The second reunion was great too except for the gypsy moth infestation and the talk of building cabins to replace the platform tents to "modernize" the camp. This whole scene was a bit disturbing as I wondered what would become of the camp. Well, the most disturbing news was yet to come. When I read the second line in the note about the Y2K reunion - "RHGSC has decided to SELL Hidden Valley" - I just couldn't believe it and immediately checked out the web site and e-mailed Kelly with the following message which was later answered by Marilyn Siegel which you now can see on the web site too:
I loved that place and saw the camp before it was opened with our girl scout troupe. I remembered how much effort was made to acquire this camp and get enough funding to purchase it (money from cookie drives helped some). I remembered the weekends with other scouts and their families spent planting hundreds of evergreen seedlings behind the staff house and later to watch them grow into big trees. It was so exciting to have such a beautiful place to go for camp. I'm not sure why they are selling it now - it seems like a crime. Arethey in financial trouble? Is there a lack of interest in camping? Are they having trouble in staffing? What are they going to do with the money from the sale of the land? I don't know if you know the answers to these questions, but I'm sure I won't be the only one asking. Anyway of providing more insight to the sale on your web page?
I thank Marilyn for answering these questions so promptly. I am still not happy though with the decision to sell, however. I want to address some of the issues Marilyn raised in addition to my feelings of what HVC meant to me.
First of all, I would like to add that I was a girl scout with RHGSC since Brownies and attended Betsy Ross Day Camp, Camp DeWitt and HVC as a camper. My best memories of scouts were with these camps as well as with the council's canoeing program. I gained the most from my resident camp experience, the CIT program, and working on the waterfront at HVC. My leadership, organizational and planning skills began at HVC where I was able to build confidence in myself to lead and work well with others . These skills were invaluable to my professional career as a project engineering manager in a world of mostly men as well as to my role as a mother who volunteers time in leading activities for children. I also have developed a life time love of the outdoors and have spread my enthusiasm to my family and friends with a variety of hiking, biking, climbing, canoeing and camping trips. I have taken leadership roles in aquatic activities such as raft guiding, swim team officiating and Masters swimming. I credit HVC for the building blocks of who I am now today.
To sell this camp now would be a crime. I guess no one in RHGSC today remembers how hard they worked to acquire and build this camp. I salute Pearl Thompson for her past endeavors and strong devotion to HVC. I'm just sorry she is no longer with us. I can't believe RHGSC is only asking 2-3 million dollars for the sale of the 1200 acre camp that includes a beautiful lake. It'll be worse if they sell it to some developer who would make out like a bandit. Where can you find another camp like that in NJ for that price? If RHGSC wants a camp that is closer to home, I hope they find one before they sell the one they already have. Don't even consider converting Camp DeWitt into a resident camp - a swimming pool just can't take the place of a lake. Too costly to maintain? All camps cost money to maintain. I know there were a few lean years of enrollment just as there were everywhere in the schools as well, but enrollment is on the rise due to the stronger economy and the baby boomers coming up. I don't believe people just aren't interested in camping anymore. If the camp is not maintained, however, the interest in HVC will diminish. Newer tents with screens would be an improvement. Cabins take away the beauty of the fresh air and sounds of the woods that I loved to hear in the open tents. Why not encourage scouts to volunteer for a few work sessions to help maintain the camp? You can also elicit help from all of us who love the camp - other camps do it. Gypsy moth infestation can be a problem - what steps are necessary to recover from this? Can we plant some more trees like we did before? Service projects are what scouting is partially about. The camp isn't that far away to schedule events. Maybe other councils could use the camp as well and RHGSC could collect some money from them. Are there any grants RHGSC could apply for? RHGCS has to show the GSUSA that HVC can be an asset and not a liability. Without this land, girls can not benefit from all of the activities the camp has to offer. The land is a service that girls directly benefit from. Land is precious, so let's not take what we have for granted and give it to the hands of some greedy land developer or other business venture. We need strong management to hang on to what we have and to take advantage of it too. I hope RHGSC can rise to the challenge.
Sincerely,
Karen Meyer Markley
markleys4@juno.com
Beth Winters "Frosty", Camper 1985-1990, CIT 1991, Staff 1992-1996
College application essays often ask one to describe a "significant life experience." I'm not sure how it happened that I did not write anything about either camp or Odyssey of the Mind on my college applications. These two "life experiences" have been quite significant. Perhaps I did not think them worthy at the time I was writing college applications, but in the years since I have come to realize exactly how significant they must have been.
I was driving halfway across the state in the snow one Saturday morning this spring to judge at an Odyssey of the Mind competition. I hadn't even found out about the competition until that Tuesday when someone asked if I wanted to help out. The fact that I didn't have to think for more than 10 seconds before volunteering must mean something. Odyssey of the Mind contributed so much to the development of my essential personality that I feel the need to return some of what it gave to me. If this means that I need to give up a Saturday of my life on 4 days notice, so be it. I'm sure people gave up their Saturdays for me when I was 12 years old.
I wonder if at some point I am done "giving back" to these organizations. This spring I donated enough time (and milage) to Odyssey of the Mind to fulfill what I felt was my obligation to the program. Oddly enough, I competed on teams for 3 years, and have volunteered my services at competitions for 4 years. I'm not sure if the equation works out, but finally I feel "evened out." Taken together (though I pretty much never think of them as a set except in this specific case), Hidden Valley Camp and Odyssey of the Mind have had a larger impact on the development of my essential personality than anything else I can think of. Because they came to mean so much to me, they are things that I want to share with children now, whether by encouraging my sister's friends to go to Hidden Valley, or by watching kids I don't know compete in Odyssey of the Mind. I hope that these children will gain the same benefits as I did, even if they won't realize it for many years. At the time I was going to camp and producing little plays that no one understood, I had no idea where I would be in the year 2000. I did not realize at the time that teamwork and performance under pressure and the ability to function with very little sleep would come in handy in the future. I never thought the friends I would make at age 10 or 14 would still be people I keep in contact with now that we are "adults." I learned early how to adapt to new situations and deal with obstacles of all kinds, and how to look at problems as opportunities for creative problem solving.
Just recently, I have been trying to I schedule my PhD qualifying exam around a camp reunion. This shows me in a tangible way just how important camp must have been to my life, if I'm willing to risk ridicule and difficulty to drive to Equinunk "one last time. I prioritize these things more highly than is probably socially acceptable, but I have decided that doesn't matter, because they really are that important to me. I say I am a wimp about life's great adventures, but I moved 1200 miles from home by myself for reasons that are unclear to me or anyone else. I may choose to ask men with trucks to help me move, but I know I could do that by myself. As a child I was surrounded by strong independent women, and when I grow up I want to be like them. Perhaps I am already a strong independent woman. Every now and again something happens that makes me believe that is true. I was a camp counselor for 6 years, 5 of them at HVC. (It seems like those numbers should be higher, because every summer lasted a hundred years.) That doesn't count the year we were CITs, then second-class staff later that same summer. I remember being 10 years old and finding out that people got paid to be camp counselors. How great would it be not only to go to camp for free, but to get paid to go to camp?! Somehow the "camp stress" has all faded from memory (and it hasn't been that long since my summer-from-hell as CIT director) and all I remember is how great it was to be paid to go to camp! I wake up some summer mornings in the half-dark and wish I could run down the hill and watch the sun rise while swimming laps in the lake. Of course our lake was cold, but I find that I most love to swim in cool lakes, because that's just the way it's supposed to be.
I worked at Hidden Valley for a while. I think I stopped working there when I felt I had given back all the camp had given to me, or at least all that I could possibly manage to return. I watched the Brownies grow up, and I watched little kids become High Adventurers and CITs. One day I realized that even the Cadettes had been born after I started coming to camp. That last year, my sister came to camp. For some reason, that was the last step. I could leave camp, knowing that my little sister would grow up there in the same way I did, hoping that it would shape her personality, and that some day this would make her feel the need to give back to HVC all it had given to her.
Last summer I visited camp. When I left I cried the whole way down the dirt road into Equinunk. I feared that I would never be able to visit camp again. (Strangely, I did not at any point fear that I would slide into the brook, even though it was dark and my vision was obscured. I have driven that road many times.) How much worse will leaving be this September, when I know I will never be able to visit camp again? How much harder will it be to say goodbye, and to get in the car and drive away. I'm not very good at closure.
I worked at Camp Amahami near Binghamton in 1997. I was pretty sure that would be my last camp summer for a while (I will never declare any year my last summer at camp until I am dead), and for a number of reasons it was time to try a new camp. I didn't think I could go "cold turkey" from Hidden Valley straight into the real world. (As it was the first summer I spent living and working in buildings was pretty rough. I didn't visit camp at all that summer, largely because I feared I would not be able to leave!) The summer of 1996 had been quite good, and I wanted to leave Hidden Valley on a high not. (That same reason had almost kept me in Ithaca for the summer of 1996, since 1995 had been so glorious. But 1996 was the year I "gave" my camp to my sister and Micki's CITs.) Another reason I went to Amahami was that they offered me the job of CIT director, which is a challenge I had always wanted. It gave me a chance and to pass on in a concrete and formal manner the things that I had learned to some young women on the verge of being camp counselors themselves. I'm not sure what I think of my decision to switch camps. I learned some things I never would have if I had stayed at HVC, and I avoided having my last HVC summer tainted by behind-the-scenes madness of that summer of 1997. I felt like I completed the giving of HVC to my sister, by moving to another camp by choice rather than necessity, and leaving her at home at HVC. I went there alone as a Brownie, and she needed to do that too.
I questioned my decision a lot that summer, especially when I got a phone call the night before both camps opened, and Micki told me HVC would not in fact open the next day if they didn't get some staff in a hurry. It was very hard for me not to get in my car and drive 2 hours south... I learned that summer that Hidden Valley could survive without me. I always knew it could, but now I have proof. Today I do not regret the summer I worked at a "new" camp. It prepared me for moving to a new university, at once so similar and so different from the one from which I came.
Now I come back to the beginning. My essential personality has been shaped by these things that were important to me as a child. Every day I use skills that I learned long ago. Once in a while, I consider where I learned how to open a can with a Swiss Army knife, or why I don't care that my boots are dirty, or how to fix pretty much anything with duct tape. I am violently opposed to the use of umbrellas when a waterproof coat will do just fine. I am not afraid to walk alone in the dark, or kill a bug with bare feet (though gypsy moth caterpillars will always creep me out). I keep my windows open much more than most people. I can catch and kill a flying mosquito.
More importantly, I know that few obstacles are insurmountable. I realize that working with (or at least tolerating) other people is more productive than demanding my own way. I do not always settle for the most obvious (but not necessarily most effective) solution. I am capable of doing things for myself, and not afraid to say that. I wonder how I would be a different person if I hadn't been given the opportunities for growth that I was. I'm glad I grew up the way I did, and I want others to be able to learn the same things by doing them. Most of all, I want my sister to be able to do whatever she wants to, and to grow into a strong independent woman. I hope the chances are not taken away from her.
"In the midst of winter
I finally learned
that there is in me
an invincible summer"
Albert Camus
21 May 2000
see Beth's web site at: http://www.oocities.org/ekw2/hvc.html
Missy Steinmetz "Gump": Staff 1999
I have read all of the responses to selling camp from all of the former campers, who returned as CIT's, and then counselors, and unfortunately, I can not say I have had that much experience with HV.
The one summer ('99) that I spent there as a counselor has left my mind with memories that will remain vibrant for years to come. Only being 17 last summer, and one of the youngest counselors on staff, I not only learned a great deal, but also grew up so much. I was an adult all summer, yet, at heart I was still a kid. So, the one summer that I served at HVC made me aware of how a counselor feels about it being sold, and also how a child would feel.
Unfortunately, I can not say that I spent my summers growing up as a child there, or even the summers as a counselor there, but I did spend one. And that one has left the largest impact on my life. Not just my life either. All of the hundreds of girls that have had the opportunity to grow at HVC will see their summer childhood thrown away and forgotten about.
As many times as read through the letter from Marilyn (which has been many) I still can't comprehend the reasons they are going to sell HV. It's such a hard concept for me to grasp. I can't imagine how disappointed the former staff members who have been with HV for many, many years must feel.
My heart goes out to you all...
Gump
Missy Steinmetz
gumperhvc@hotmail.com
Kellyanne Driscoll "Clover": Camper from 1980-1986, Staff 1987-1990, 1993-1995, Scout from 1978-1996, Gold Award Recipient 1989 RHGSC
The closing of Hidden Valley Camp is something I never thought I would see. Especially because of the tremendous devotion girls in the Girl Scout Council of Rolling Hills have given to the camp. The camp was funded by girl scouts for girl scouts. The camp has been a safe haven for girls of middle to lower-middle income in the summer monthes since 1971. Families who could not other wise afford to send their girls to summer camp, have sent them summer after summer to Hidden Valley Camp. This will be the greatest loss to the Girls of Middlesex, Somerset, and Hunterton Counties.
What did Hidden Valley do for me that Girl Scouting did not do for me? It gave me confidence. My Girl Scout troop provided me with all sorts of knowledge on what types of opportunities were available to me, and how important community service is. But HVC gave me the confidence to use that information. Without all that I learned at camp, I doubt very much that I would be working on a Masters of Science degree. I'm sure I would still have had a very happy and fulfilled life. But I don't think I would have had the courage to fulfill this dream.
Camp taught me how to work well with others in very stressful situations. It taught me that my fears are always manageable. It taught me how to accept differences in culture by working with people from around the world.
The closing of Hidden Valley will take away these opportunities from girl within the Council of Rolling Hills. The likelihood of finding a comparable piece of property within New Jersey is very unlikely, given the high price of real estate and high tax rates. Since Camp DeWitt is already beyond its capacity to take on new campers, it obviously can't take the girls from Hidden Valley. Instead, many of these girls will be without a summer camp. They will be without a place where they are shown 24 hours a day just how wonderful it is to be a girl. That is the greatest sin of all.
I mourn the passing of Pearl Thompson. You know, the woman the green in front of the Dining Hall was named for? Some would say she is the only reason council did not sell the camp before now. She passed away last year. Now that there aren't any strong women dedicated to keeping the camp open within the council, all the hours of selling cookies to open the camp in the 1960's by Brownies and Seniors alike will be in vain. Pearl Thompson saw the value of Hidden Valley in the transformation girls underwent in their 1 to 6 week stay at Hidden Valley.
To all of you who made camp possible for me, my thanks and prayers go out to you all.
To all of you who want to close camp just so it will make your life a little easier, shame on you. Girl Scouting isn't about having an easy life. Its about meeting the challenges life presents you and not only overcoming them, but enjoying them in the process. It isn't that difficult to staff camp. It just takes work. It isn't that difficult to raise money, it just takes time. It isn't any harder to communicate with camp staff in 2000 than it was in 1974. These sorts of statements are all too clearly transparent.
Kellyanne Driscoll dkellyanne@excite.com