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.