Notes from Nashville

This is a picture of Camp Shiloh kids, taken in 1964.  This cabin of boys has won the "honor flag" because their tent was the cleanest that week--the boy in the middle of the picture is holding that white honor flag.  What's so interesting to me is that three of these boys are wearing suits.  They are at summer camp, sleeping in a tent at night, and there's one boy with a suit, vest, and pocket handkerchief; and another boy is wearing a white suit coat.  From other pictures I'm guessing that they wore these suits to Sunday services in the chapel.  I wonder  if they kept those suits clean and what their mothers thought when they came home.  The camp director at the time, whose name is Buzzy, allowed me to scan this photo and some others in his collection.  I have a picture of him, too, in front of these tents, and in that photo he is also wearing a grey suit and tie.

Another set of photographs in his collection: as I mentioned in another post, the 1964 counselors went to the World's Fair.  There is a picture of the counselors waiting in line to get into the DuPont Pavilion at the World's Fair (that pavilion is where they would have seen a musical called "The Wonderful World of Chemistry").  The name DuPont also stands out to me, because Clinton Davidson, who first bought the Camp Shiloh property for the camp, knew the DuPont family.  Through this connection with the DuPonts and others, Davidson helped Harding College's president keep Harding financially afloat--Davidson taught the president of Harding College the art of fundraising among private donors like the DuPonts.  Harding College, as did other major Church of Christ colleges throughout the country, sent counselors to Camp Shiloh.

An interviewee I spoke with this past week, who was a young boy attending camp in 1964, said those counselors were so strong, clean, muscular, and good looking, that all the campers wanted to be like them.  He talks about the singing all through the camp that sort of made him stop and take notice of God.  Was the "Shiloh spirit" exportable to his world at home? he wondered.
Some of these kids were coming from very broken places in the city.  Here's a picture of East New York, Brooklyn, a ghetto that had been growing worse for decades due to unremitting racism and neglect from the government, landlords, and society in general.  As the Shiloh year-round program began in 1967, more and more kids started coming from buildings that seemed unlivable:

This past week I also interviewed Dodie, one of Eddie Grindley's daughters.  Eddie was the founding director of Camp Shiloh in the fifties, and so much of Shiloh's early spirit and vision came from him.  She told me that Eddie never thought much about what people would think about him.  He didn't care if his preaching exactly fit the church's prescription.  He didn't care if there might be danger waiting for him in the more violent places on the East Side of Manhattan where he was constantly offering to help people in need.  He was essentially foolish in these ways, but also effective and friendly and loving.  And he wanted Camp Shiloh to reach camp kids all year long.

Other people thought so, too.  And so, as I mentioned, in 1967, Shiloh moved willing counselors--soon the suits would be replaced by long hair and beards for the men--into places like East New York, Brooklyn.  Many of these people whom I interviewed said they simply felt they had to "do something" to identify with and show love to the kids who had been left alone by the larger society for so long.  As they taught reading and arts and crafts and founded food co-ops, Shiloh began to shift.  The country began to feel broken, too, by its long drawn-out war, by the public killings of heroes, by the bizarre discoveries about the country's president.  Some broken people even found their way to working at Shiloh.  The Shiloh message shifted some, too.  Although it stayed true to Eddie's vision, now Shiloh didn't so much emphasize the old Church of Christ doctrines of baptism and salvation as they did the responsibilities of the church toward the world and the love of God for each individual.  And after a while some of the traditional Church of Christ membership wasn't quite sure what to make of its youth.

In another Nashville interview, Diane talked to me about how wonderful Shiloh was for her as a dishwasher (later counselor) who first came in 1975 when she was sixteen.  Even after violence in Brooklyn profoundly affected her and her family, she nevertheless made friends, experienced things she never would have otherwise, and gained self confidence.  She went back to camp for six more summers.  When the decision was made by some on the board of Shiloh to several non Church of Christ staff to leave the program, she says it was heartbreaking for her and others around her.  Because of this decision and the changing national focus away from programs like Shiloh, it would struggle through the 1980s and into the 1990s.

I've been reading a book for this project called Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol.  He describes the recent conditions of Mott Haven, an area in the Bronx, where Shiloh is now involved.  Kozol looks at Mott Haven from the perspective of its children, whom he interviews.  These kids are talking about feeling like society doesn't want them at all, like they are pushed into these violent, dangerous, and unlovely spaces so that no one will have to look at their situation too closely.

I think whether dressed in suits or with beards, at camp or in the East Village or Brooklyn or in the work being done now in Mott Haven, I think that Shiloh has been, from Eddie Grindley on, trying to look at the people beyond itself, especially the children.

 And whether a kid wears a suit jacket or a bathing suit,

each one of them is important.

Colorado! And a difficult quiz. . .

I just got back from a trip to Colorado to interview several Shiloh folks and help host a Colorado History Party.  My thanks to everyone involved!  In Colorado I got a chance to talk to:

ca. 1951

 a camper/counselor who helped get camp ready for its first summer (1951).  He lived in the New Jersey neighborhood, and his Sunday school teacher was the man who bought the first land for Camp Shiloh;

a Long Island kid who came to Shiloh every chance she could, including as a camper, a"canteen girl," and a volunteer in the year-round program.  She was baptized at summer camp, and she and her friends celebrated with ice cream;

2012

ca. 1974

a conscientious objector whose draft board permitted him two years at Shiloh, and classified him as a minister.  He would give his two years and stay five more, and he would become the executive director of Shiloh;

1977

2012

and I met more people who came in and out of Shiloh, people who now call Colorado their home.

If you were at Shiloh then, can you identify any of these folks?

The picture above is me (seated on the floor, in the center of the frame) with most of the people who came to the Colorado History Party.  

In Colorado, I learned from one person about some frighteningly violent experiences that happened to Shiloh workers living in the inner city.  I learned from another person about how Shiloh opened up new possibilities for campers.  And I heard from another about how strange it was for an African-American who grew up in Civil Rights-era Memphis to encounter urban New York.

I heard some stories about some wild field trips.

I took a difficult quiz.

                                

Here it is.  I wasn't alone in taking this quiz.  Above is a scan of a paper that was given at Shiloh's orientation session, which happened in the fall of 1972.  A Colorado Shiloh alum kept his quiz all these years.  He only got four answers right, earning, he is not afraid to say, a score that ranked him as "idiot".

The purpose of this quiz was to get new Shiloh staffers used to the idea that, even though they were intelligent people, they suddenly might not have all of the answers, and they might even be idiots now and then.  How do you fare?  Can you figure out what these words would have meant to a kid in East New York in 1972?

1. Anklebuster     13. Johnny pump
2. Bulldogger      14. The dozens
3. Highwaters      15. Screet
4. Stomps            16. Booty
5. Tubes              17. Skelly
6. J                      18. Dukey
7. Butch              19. Biter
8. Mother's Day    20. Peasy head (?)
9. Snoppies  (?)       21. Behind
10. Gem              22. Holding
11. Snap              23. Get over
12. Greyboy        24. Get a run
                            25. Stoop

I took the test and was an idiot, too.  I looked up the answers in the Urban Dictionary, and I really felt like an idiot, to be so white.  Well, I did know at least one answer, #17, because I'd heard quite a few Shiloh people talk about it.  Skelly is a kids' game played on the New York streets and sidewalks with bottlecaps, and there's a play area in chalk.  The players try to flick their bottle caps into numbered zones.  It's a clever game.  Did you ever play it?

And it's not on the quiz, but there's double dutch.  I heard how important that was, too.  Play.  Maybe what I am learning makes a grander, deeper story, or maybe it is about little moments in time, but in Colorado I learned about some people who played together.  Two of them are below.  One of them I met in NYC and one in Colorado, and they are now separated by many years and many miles.  Well, back then they found that they weren't so far apart in their desire to have fun, and for a few months they played double dutch together on a New York City street.  In their stomps (shoes).

ca. 1974

2012