Camp it up
Area summer camps provide adventure and broaden horizons for multiple generations of campers
Elisabeth Gay Rice, 62, remembers the feeling she got when she walked into her cabin at Camp Juliette Low in Cloudland, Georgia, as a 9-yearold. Like many young girls who grow up longing for independence, “I remember being eager for my parents to leave, meeting my counselors and learning the names of my fellow campers, learning camp songs and the camp rules,” she recalls.
Summer camps are an iconic American childhood experience, one that fosters a sense of belonging and encourages acceptance of others from different cultures and upbringings.
“My camp experience helped me [appreciate] my college roommates who were different from me,” Rice says.
Tommy Hagey, director at Camp Marymount in Fairview, Tennessee, says an overnight camp experience is important now more than ever.
“Our kids need to be unplugged from technology,” he says. “We provide that opportunity to get unplugged and in tune with faith, self and the community around them in a simpler atmosphere, away from the distractions of everyday life.”
Children have the freedom — under the careful eyes of counselors — to roam the hills, swim the lakes, paddle the rivers and ride horses through the fields and along the trails.
But there was also a favorite part of Rice’s camp experience, one that she feels is important for all young girls, and that was “living in nature and being part of a girl-power environment,” she says.
For Phil Jacobs, attending Alpine Camp for Boys in Mentone, Alabama, gave him “a measure of independence and a sense of accomplishment,” says the 44-year-old attorney looking back on his childhood camp experience.
“When you are 8 years old and away from your mom and dad and don’t have all the comforts of home for a month, you must become independent and learn how to embrace all that is new about the experience that you are having,” Jacobs says. “You have to learn for yourself how to thrive in a different way. You might make a mistake or something embarrassing might happen, and you
have to figure things out. I also learned a sense of adventure and the joy of creating adventure.”
Glenn Breazeale, director and a former camper at Alpine Camp, says the most popular activities at the camp founded by his father-in-law, Dick O’Ferrall, in 1959, include those that have been loved by campers for decades: swimming and other watersports in Little River, which runs through the camp, as well as the ropes course and rock climbing. For older boys, there’s also flyfishing, mountain biking, weight training and golf. But one message runs through the camp: It’s a time to “grow in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man,” according to the camp’s mission statement.
For many families, summer camp is passed down from generation to generation.
Jacobs plans to send his son, 9-yearold Walker, to Alpine Camp for the third time this summer. He got a taste of it during a 10-day session in 2022, returned for a monthlong session last summer and will do the same this coming summer.
“I wanted him to be surrounded by the beauty that exists at Alpine — the water, trees and rustic nature of a place that is so unique,” Jacobs says, adding that Walker’s years at camp have already made him a more independent and mature young man, capable in an everyday sense of being responsible and doing more for himself and understanding more of who he is and what he wants.
Amy Seigenthaler Pierce, 57, spent many happy summers as a camper at Camp Marymount, a camp in Middle Tennessee affiliated with the Catholic church.
“There is a purity and simplicity about life at camp that I haven’t found anywhere else,” Pierce says. “As a result, the friendships I made there were deeper than most and have lasted my lifetime.”
So when her daughters, Veronica, now 19, and Mary Alice, now 18, became old enough, she knew what they needed: an opportunity to embrace camp life and learn the important lessons it has to offer.
“In this age of Instagram and TikTok, they look forward every year to escaping into the woods with their friends at camp,” Pierce adds. “Marymount has been central to our lives for generations.”
Veronica says she loves to compare camp experiences with her mother to find out what’s changed and what’s remained the same.
“Most of the time, I’ve found that many of our stories are very similar,” she says. “That shows how, even through the passing of time, the love for camp does not change.”
Rice, Jacobs, Pierce and both Pierce daughters have returned to the camps of their childhoods as counselors and, for Rice, also as a member of the board of trustees that runs the former Girl Scout camp.
For Jacobs, returning to Alpine as a counselor was about reliving the magic he found as a camper and passing on life lessons to the next generation of boys.
“I began thinking about the significant impact my counselors had on my life as an 8- to 10-year-old kid and how I still carried those memories and life lessons with me,” he says. “I wanted to give back and have the same opportunity to impact young people. Alpine was and has always been a place of adventure and fun, where anything might happen in a magical way, and I wanted to be a part of it again.”