I could write novels about how much working at camp means to me. Scouting has always been a huge part of my life, but from the very first time I attended RSR when I was eight years old— I loved it. I couldn’t wait to go back, and especially the first time I attended a full week of summer camp as a Scout a few years later I was hooked. I looked up to the camp staff so much, and I wanted to be just like them.
RSR, our council’s camp located in Morris, IL and approximately five times the size of the Vatican, is a beautiful place indeed. I won’t use the unabbreviated name because honestly I don’t want people to find my blog while looking up awesome places to go to summer camp.
A few years after my first full week of camp, my dream was realized when I was able to join the camp staff in 2013. It was everything I wanted it to be and so much more. I had five great summers there in a variety of positions. The skills and work ethic I learned there are what I credit for my success in any and all other areas of life. I really respected our Camp Director, Nick. His first year as the Camp Director was the same year I attended BSA Summer Camp and wanted to work there, so he was somewhat of a legend in my mind. RSR as a camp was doing really well at that time, somewhat of a golden age. We were still relatively small, but we had a fantastic reputation particular for our highly trained and capable camp staff. I got along with Nick well, but I was never in his inner circle which I credit as the reason why I was passed up for a couple director team job opportunities over the years. I didn’t hold a grudge though, our camp staff was highly competitive and sought after. Every year many people would apply and many would have to be turned away, so the camp could be quite selective in who it hired.
At the end of the summer of 2017, I had decided that would be my last year at RSR. I was going to college, and I loved my time at camp but at the time I wanted to be all in on playing trumpet. My plan was to audition for a Drum Corp International group and spend the next summer touring across the country playing different shows.
However, in the fall of 2017, Nick announced he would not be returning to RSR, causing a major shift in our local Scouting world. He didn’t leave under the best circumstances, which I honestly do not blame him in the slightest. That’s a story for another day but it was an abject failure on the part of our council leadership (scout units, camps, and assets are organized under the umbrella of local organizations called a “council”). Therefore, it was not an amicable split. He went to a much larger and older camp in a neighboring council and became the Camp Director there. Many of RSR’s previous staff members went with him. Not being in the inner circle, I did not feel the desire to follow him to a different camp, especially since much of my own personal nostalgia and passion for Scouting revolved around our camp.
Our council leaders announced that a previous staff member, Lexie, would be taking over as the Camp Director at RSR. I was happy to hear that. I had previously worked with Lexie and was excited she was coming back. However, since many longtime members of the camp staff had followed Nick, they were struggling to find people for the summer of 2018. Faced with some serious personal stress about the price tag of DCI and with a desire to go back and help my camp survive this tough transition, I eventually called Lexie and offered to help in any position she still had available.
That summer was rough, to say the least. Some of the new leadership dynamics that emerged with many of the new staff members made things really difficult that summer for plenty of reasons. By the end of the summer, I was frustrated and I was spent. I knew that I had contributed a lot of positive things to the summer and done all that I could, but I swore to myself I would not come back unless I was in a position that afforded me far more agency in how the summer would go. The camp’s upper administration is made up of the Camp Director who oversees the Program Director and Camp Commissioner as the two other upper level administrators. That fall, I interviewed for the position of Camp Commissioner against two of my friends. While I did think I was the best person for the job, I had no ill will towards the others that interviewed against me. However, for me, it was all or nothing. The position went to someone else, and so I knew my time there was up. I declined the alternative position they offered me and spent my next few summers elsewhere.
I largely left the Scouting part of my life behind, but I still kept in the know about what was going on. Reportedly, the summer of 2019 was also rough for many people and Lexie announced her departure following that summer. She was replaced with an absolutely absurd choice of a cantankerous and out of touch man named Jim. I knew Jim for years because he would volunteer with our climbing tower and high ropes course team, and he certainly had a reputation for being an asshole. I still am astounded by that choice, but it is honestly really difficult to get people to agree to take this kind of a position in the first place so my guess is he was their only option.
That winter, I went to our Council Awards Banquet because my dad was receiving a prestigious (and well deserved) award. At the Banquet I talked to Ted, our council’s Scout Executive (the head professional and CEO of the council). I’ve known Ted for years since he started with our council and I was on camp staff, but he cornered me and asked if I was going to work for them that summer. He knew I had recently turned 21 and was therefore old enough to meet the requirements for some of the more difficult to fill positions at camp, like administration or high risk area directors such as our Aquatics area or Shooting Sports range. I hadn’t really thought about going back, but I told Ted I would consider it but they would really have to work hard to convince me to come back. Ted must have pointed me out to Jim immediately after that conversation because later that night Jim approaches me, pretends to not remember who I am, insists that I had told Ted I wanted to be his Aquatics Director, and acts as if I need to beg him for the position. I told him he had grossly misinterpreted the situation and walked away.
About a month or two later, the COVID-19 pandemic began and the summer of 2020 was cancelled at RSR, so it ended up being a moot point anyways. Somehow, Jim was still slated to be the Camp Director for 2021, and in April of 2021 (a ridiculously late time to be making these decisions) he reached out to me asking to be the Program Director or second in command of the camp. I know a burning car wreck when I see one, so I declined.
That entire summer I heard plenty of horror stories about how bad it went at camp for a number reasons, some in Jim’s control and many not. The Scouting organization as a whole had taken a huge hit because of COVID, their sexual abuse lawsuit and settlement, and following bankruptcy. It was clear, the golden age of RSR that I knew and loved was gone. To be honest, this pained me greatly because I knew how much that had meant to me.
In the fall of 2021, I saw a camp staff application posted by our council that revealed they were looking for a new Camp Director. Shortly afterwards and for unrelated reasons, I decided to make a brief appearance at a weekend Order of the Arrow (OA) event, another Scouting organization I had previously been extremely involved with. There I sat at a table with one of my previous coworkers and two other people who had worked the summer of 2021 on camp staff. They told us the gory details of just how bad the summer was, and it grieved me. Again, the RSR I knew and loved was a memory. Many people like me who had remembered what it was like and what our reputation meant had left in frustration.
On a whim, I applied to be the Camp Director. I didn’t really expect them to take me seriously. I had assumed they were looking for someone older or perhaps more experienced. They certainly took their sweet time getting back to me, but I interviewed over zoom with a panel of Scouters, some familiar some not.
I did not expect to get called back because it was clear that they were looking for someone long term, and I had decided to be open and honest about the fact I was in graduate school and could do it for 1-2 years tops. At the time, I wasn’t planning on working in schools, so I did not expect to have summers off after graduate school.
Against these odds, Ted called me up and asked to meet with me at the local Scout office. I had thought that this was going to be a second interview, but really this conversation was him trying to convince me to take the job. I appreciate the fact that he was brutally honest about how everything went wrong the previous year, he did not try to sugarcoat what I was walking into. We were in a bad spot as a national organization, as a council, and as a camp. Even RSR’s regulars that had stuck through the past few years were hurt and upset about last year. Other councils were selling camps left and right, and the specter of selling RSR if camp fails has always been on the horizon… Now it was genuinely a crazy idea, but I thought I had just enough experience and maybe just the right perspective to be able to turn this ship around. I took the job.
From flying on a Spirit Airlines flight to California to attend a section of the National Camping School to get certified as a Camp Director, to recruiting all kinds of new faces to work for us, to a grueling accreditation process— the next seven months of prep work were a special kind of insane… Until there I was; back at camp. A place I had loved since I was a child.
I remembered attempting swimming merit badge my first year as a Boy Scout here. I struggled to complete the last requirement where one had to jump into the water fully clothed and inflate the clothes into a makeshift rescue tube. I felt the weight of my clothes drag me deep down where I did not have the strength to keep myself above water. I couldn’t do it that day. I wished that kid could have seen me.
I remembered walking into my first camp staff interview terrified. I was interviewing for a volunteer position where they usually took everyone that applied, but I felt as if the stakes were never higher. I wished that kid could have seen me.
I remembered lying on the floor of an A-frame tent with my best friend and tent partner, Jack, talking about how we both wanted to come and work here so we could live that week over and over again. I wished Jack could have seen me. I wished Jack could have been with me. Jack passed away unexpectedly at the beginning of 2016, and that dream from our tent floor in our Forest Glade campsite was never realized. He would have made a great camp staff member— the best.
It was the first place I ever felt like I belonged. Working at camp was the first thing I ever thought I was good at. I could never explain to others why I was willing to spend my entire summer at an old strip mine turned into a youth camp in Morris, but I understood. And there I stood in the middle of the Totem Poles that welcome each person to camp, no longer a kid dreaming of a life as a counselor but as the Camp Director.
To say that everything fell into place that summer would be a gross misrepresentation of the combined effort of a great many people, but, somehow, we did it. Against all the odds, we had an incredible summer, and all who came to RSR that summer experienced the same joy and warmth that I did as a kid. It was enough to convince me that RSR’s best days were not behind it, they are here, now, and also ahead of us.
The words to Scout Vespers, a song we sing to close every campfire, are as follows:
Softly falls the light of day,
As our campfire fades away,
Silently each Scout should ask,
Have I done my daily task?
Have I kept my honor bright?
Can I guiltless sleep tonight?
Have I done and have I dared,
everything to be prepared?
I owe most of our success to my dear friends and coworkers, Andy, our Program Director, and Kyle, our Camp Commissioner. I did not do it alone, but we certainly gave it every possible effort. The summer of 2022 was almost over before any of us dared to say it, but we’ve said it many times since: The 2022 RSR Camp Staff, pictured above, is the Staff that saved RSR.
I guess that makes me the Camp Director that saved RSR.
[title pending] 