San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
CAMP MARSTON MARKS 100 YEARS OF SKITS, S’MORES
Retiring director says endowment needed to ensure site’s future
In April 1921, San Diego developer Ed Fletcher persuaded a handful of fellow businessmen to join him on a five-hour, horsedrawn wagon ride up into the North County mountains near Julian.
Fletcher’s plan was to convince the men — whose names now decorate local streets, schools and parks, like George Marston, Roscoe Hazard and L.A. Turrentine — that San Diego’s YMCA needed an overnight camp “where boys could escape the conventionalities of the city and embrace the attractions of the wild.”
His idea was a hit, and the men persuaded a land owner in the Pine Hills area to lease a gently sloping 2-acre meadow to the YMCA of San Diego for $1 a year. Four months later, the newly christened Pine Hills Camp for Boys was born with the arrival of the first pack of 100 or so young boys. Renamed in 1929 after Marston — who helped create Balboa Park and the San Diego County Library system — Camp Marston has survived, thrived and grown. Last month, it marked its 100th anniversary of campfires, crafts, hikes, singalongs, s’mores, and skit nights.
Camp Marston’s longtime director Tom Madeyski, 64, said the camp experience hasn’t changed much over the past 100 years. But the cost of doing business has skyrocketed, particularly fire insurance coverage for the bone-dry property. In order to ensure Camp Marston can offer a rite-of-passage experience to thousands of young people for the next century, Madeyski is raising money to build a camp endowment fund before he retires next spring.
“You never know how much camp can change a child’s life, but I know there’s a social and emotional impact to it,” said Madeyski,
who is district executive director for YMCA Overnight Camps. “People need to know how precious a place like this can be, and I want to do everything in my power to preserve it.”
‘Healthy, happy outdoor life’
In the camp’s early years, boys paid $10, plus $1.50 for transportation, for a oneweek camp that offered “a healthy happy outdoor life” filled with hiking, campfires and activities that eventually grew to include archery, boxing, rifle target-shooting, swimming, mountainclimbing and horse-back riding. In 1929, the first cabins were built, and in 1937 electricity arrived.
Originally, the camp had a military format with morning reveille. As part of the YMCA — an acronym for the 1844-born Young Men’s Christian Association — Camp Marston taught Judeo-christian principles, along with the four core values of caring, honesty, respect and responsibility. Those four values are still painted and etched on the camp walls today. Among the camp’s most famous early alumni were baseball legend Ted Williams, actor Charlton Heston and TV host Art Linkletter.
Thanks to several land acquisitions over the years, Camp Marston has grown to 250 acres, which includes a nearby sister camp, Raintree Ranch. In 1960, Camp Marston began offering allgirls camps and in 1966, the camp became co-ed. Today, Camp Marston hosts about 15,800 campers a year. It operates 340 days a year offering sixth-grade school camp, summer camp, family camp and youth camps, ranging in price from $300 to $800 a week. This past week, more than 220 sixth-graders from Aviara Oaks Middle School in Carlsbad were in residence.
As the years passed, boxing was eliminated, .22 rifles were replaced by BB guns, the horses moved to Raintree Ranch, rock-climbing gave way to an artificial climbing tower and dodgeball was replaced with a kindler, gentler game known as gaga ball.
These days, Camp Marston has a swimming pool, volleyball court, soccer field, paintball range and the man-made Lake Jessop, which has nearly run dry this summer due to lack of rainfall.
Over the past 100 years, the camp has only shut down twice. The first time was in the mid-1940s during the polio epidemic. It closed again from March 2020 to June 2021 for the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2003, the Cedar fire burned through much of the camp’s surrounding hills, but its structures were saved by two fire engine companies who used the camp as their firefighting staging area.
To re-forest the hills blackened by the fire, the Camp Marston staff planted 40,000 pine seedlings donated by the California Department of Forestry. During the driest months that year, youth campers walked into the hills each day and watered the baby trees with small water-filled milk cartons.
Camp traditions
Earlier this summer, Madeyski turned a storage room in the camp’s nature center into a museum featuring 100 years of Camp Marston history. On the walls are printed camp programs dating back to the 1920s, embroidered camper badges, historical documents and archival photos. One wall features pictures of married couples who met their future spouses at Camp Marston, and there are many photos celebrating the camp’s most-beloved traditions.
Camp weeks always include day hikes to visit local sights like the mystical Pegasus trail or “Triple Dead Fred,” a beloved but now deceased tree. Since 1932, all camp weeks end with a candlelight ceremony. And every camper is expected to take part in skit night by delivering a few spoken lines at the Old Oaks amphitheater.
Over the years, the camp curriculum has adapted to changing times. These days, school campers learn more about STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and global warming than they did 20 years ago. The camp has also adapted to the reality of children who have been raised on electronic devices. A recent study by the National Wildlife Federation found today’s children spend seven hours a day in front of screens and just seven minutes a day playing outdoors.
Camp Marston’s code of conduct requires campers to leave their cellphones and other electronic devices at home, or be ready to surrender them at check-in. Occasionally, overprotective parents will sneak phones into their children’s luggage or
give their child a “dummy” phone to hand over if they’re caught. But Madeyski said most campers — from the 7year-olds to the 17-year-olds — love being untethered from their home and school life for a week because camp offers them freedom, independence and a fresh start.
“What kids enjoy the most about camp is the ability to create true authentic friendship and the freedom to be themselves,” Madeyski said. “At camp there’s no baggage, no social groups and all social barriers break down. They learn how to be self-sufficient, how to socialize and how to be confident and resilient. Kids can be kids again.”
Madeyski was 10 years old the first time he went to camp on the East Coast, and 16 years old when got his first job as a camp counselor. He’s now in his 42nd year with the YMCA and his 31st year at Camp Marston. During a tour of the camp last week he shot a few arrows at the archery range, played some solo volleyball and hiked up hills with gusto. Although he’s a little sad to be retiring next year, he hopes to leave Camp Marston in a better place financially before he leaves with his plan for the Campaign for the Second Century endowment fund.
“Camp is the place where I always felt better than I did anywhere else,” he said. “Camp can be a lot of things but it’s really only about one thing — people learning to live together in small groups in the great outdoors.”
For information on Camp Marston, visit ymcasd.org/ camps/camp-marston.