What Did You Learn at Camp?

Through these posts you will be meeting Katrina Dixon, Monica Nicola, Gemma Perretta, Betsy Sherman, Tim Rohe, and other members of the moving image team. Our goal this month is ten finding aids, products being crafted at the same time that the project infrastructure is being created.

Katrina's first group of finding aids are all about summer camps in Maine. Today's Times had a story on funding for youth employment with an irresistible hook for people who have had anything to do with summer camps: "I learned everything I needed to know at camp."

When reviewing job applicants, Doug Herzog, the president of the MTV Networks Entertainment Group, said he would light up if one had experience as a camp counselor. “College is great; everyone who has the opportunity should go to college, but I learned everything I needed to know at camp.” New York Times, March 8, 2010

Our holdings reflect the importance of the summer camp industry to the northeast. The National Film Preservation Foundation, which provided funding to preserve the original work, is about to launch streaming clips from a 1926 film of Wohelo-The Luther Gulick Camps. Many of the camps, like this one, are family owned and run over generations.

Katrina's hidden collections include Camp Runoia, Chewonki, North Star Camp, and Medomak. The latter employed Henry Perley, Chief Red Eagle, for many years. Perley also appears in the Sanders Family Collection, guiding a 1948 canoe trip in the Moosehead Lake area.

Besides being a multi-generational industry, wonder what camps have to do with work life? A report for the Maine Youth Camping Association finds camps an economic driver for the region: "Camps create about $245 million per year in direct and indirect economic impacts, contributing about $25 million in tax revenues for Maine's state and local governments."

Wohelo-The Luther Gulick Camp Collection, 1926.