I have so many things I could talk about in this blog post, it seems like an embarrassment of riches (again my apologies to those whom I didn't get a chance to include!).
I'l start with the History Party that happened last but represented people who were at Shiloh the earliest in this post. In the Nashville History Party that happened when I got back from my most recent New York trip, six former Shiloh staffers who had been involved in the program in the year 1970 (and some before and/or after that year) gathered to talk about things like Shiloh's intentional focus on staff group dynamics; the year-round program in Red Bank, New Jersey; and whether or not their parents supported their decision as twenty-year-olds to move and to work with inner-city kids. They talked about driving last-leg vehicles across the country for fundraising trips or to move to the ghetto. I asked them what it was like to talk about these memories. It feels good, they said. You tell someone you've been at a camp program, but they don't quite understand all it meant to you. They told me Shiloh had a profound affect on each of their lives in turn and moved them into new spheres of life: a true believer in the Holy Spirit; a liberation theologian; a businesswoman with appropriate communication skills; a politically aware citizen.
These recent NYC interviews and get-togethers have been in some ways about reconnecting members of the Shiloh family after long absences. Because it was around the Thanksgiving holiday, former staffers came into the city for a get-together and a turkey dinner. Then later there was a History Party. The Brownsville (Brooklyn) History Party was a kind of reunion of late 1970s former staffers and now-grown kids, a few of whom had not seen each other for decades. The group hugged each other all around, reminisced about how they used to ride the subways en masse for field trips to the UN building or the ferry, talked about what it was like to see each other after so many years (the now-grown kids said they still, oddly, felt like children when they were around their former counselors). There was some singing of the old songs. I felt glad that the History Party was in Brownsville itself, in a historical society that was trying to uplift the Brownsville community. There were bittersweet moments in our gathering when the group talked about Shiloh staffers leaving this neighborhood for good. At one point the grown-up kids wanted the former staffers to know that they had made a difference. I interviewed a few of them later, and they were insistent on this point. But the longtime absence still seemed to me like it was a sadness.
Here's why it happened: when the Shiloh staffers had left East New York and Brownsville at that time, it was because the Shiloh board had reconfirmed its belief that the staff should only belong to the Church of Christ, a position they felt was crucial to the work. The staff members in actuality or in sympathy, however, did not reflect this policy, and they unanimously requested the board to reconsider. The results of the board's decisions surrounding this policy led to a significant shift in staff of the program. Those who were committed to the work left or were asked to leave the program.
Some of these people, however, stayed in the city under their own auspices, to continue to address the needs of the people there, this time through the medium of sustainable housing. And so during my trip to NYC I interviewed several of the people, former Shiloh staffers and friends, who helped to start a project named for the biblical prophet Nehemiah. Nehemiah rebuilt the decrepit walls of Jerusalem so he would no longer feel ashamed before God as the city crumbled. The former Shiloh workers, neighbors, and local church members and leaders quoted Nehemiah as they worked toward a large-scale building project to give East New York and Brownsville residents livable home-ownership in the neighborhood. The former staffers told me they were unable to do this under the auspices of Shiloh in the late 1970s, but it was their involvement in Shiloh that had moved them into the place where they could see the need for such a project. Though there had been dark times associated with their break with Shiloh, they said the housing movement proved to be one of the proudest achievements of their lives. Here's a photograph of one of the neighborhood homeowners and early leaders of the project, Carmelia. A Brownsville resident, she had befriended Shiloh workers soon before the project began, and together they participated in a reading group and potluck circle that formed the nucleus for their working relationship. Thousands of houses have now been built, and she still continues her active involvement in the neighborhood's homeowner's association and in community improvement in Brownsville.
And Shiloh itself, financially diminished and understaffed after the board's decision, would continue but struggle during the 1980s and into the 1990s, and would operate as only a camp and not a year-round program during this time. The camp forged ahead, but the city program died and stayed dead for many years. When the building that housed the camp's kitchen burned down in the mid 1990s, the insurance money would go towards a re-expansion of Shiloh's vision back into the inner-city neighborhoods, this time in the South Bronx. The board would change and then change again. Shiloh hired a new executive director, and they would build or rebuild programs that reinvigorated their emphasis on outreach to underserved kids in at-risk neighborhoods.
Now the late 1970s Shiloh staffers' return visits to the old Brownsville neighborhood and to an enthusiastic support of the current Shiloh has been a healing process for them, I think. Current Shiloh has reached out to its alumni as they realized what had happened in the program's past. This oral history project has been one of the ways the alumni have responded to that outreach. I think they have long wanted to reconnect with their Shiloh past.
For the first time in this project, I was able to spend a fair amount of time digging into stories from current Shiloh. I've spent most of my time so far mainly thinking about the time through about 1977. So now I'm able to present, from among the half dozen or so current Shiloh "kids" I interviewed, some more current stories. First, a picture of two young women who are twins, Nakeisha and Nicole. They have been involved in Shiloh since they were young girls running around at camp and then attending Shiloh's Friday after-school program. They'd go home and write letters to their camp friends. They continued to be involved in Shiloh activities all through their growing-up years, including as camp counselors themselves when they were old enough. Now they're both in college and still connected to the program. We all spent several hours together in Nicole's dorm room with a microphone and a recorder, and they told me funny stories and sad ones about their lives. The way they both presented themselves struck me as thoughtful, open-hearted, and articulate. They told me that their strong mother and Shiloh are the two most significant influences on their lives. With those two things going for them, they said, how could they go wrong?
Nakeisha and Nicole's story is uniquely theirs, but I spoke to quite a few others whose lives were deeply influenced by their time and relationships at Shiloh. In my interviewing I want to allow plenty of room for people to express either loving Shiloh or critiquing it as they need to, or both. I have been a little unprepared for the amount of love that has poured forth from people in these interviews, not just a kid's love for camp, or a dependent kind of love that speaks what someone else might want to hear; but instead what appears to be a genuinely happy love of the Shiloh community and of the people they themselves are allowed to be in that place. This goes for both kids and staff members.
Nakeisha and Nicole (and others) told me about a term that people use at camp: "Shiloh sexy". They said when you don't have a shoelace, you put a piece of yarn in your shoe, and that's Shiloh sexy. If you don't have a toothbrush, you use a piece of cloth and some toothpaste, and that's Shiloh sexy. If flushing toilet paper at camp will clog up the whole septic system, or if the food is terrible because the kitchen burned down a few years back and the camp had to bring in a food truck, it's still a wonderful camp and you can tough it out and bond with everyone around you about it, no matter who you all are. Or, as my mom says about some of her experiences at Shiloh in the 1970s, "We did the best we could with what we had." The emphasis is on the relationships. A phrase graced the cover of the Shiloh publication, Reach Out, in October of 1973, "The depth of relationship we develop with the children is the measure of our success." This is consistent with what I found at current Shiloh today, now encompassed in the phrase I heard a lot in my NYC interviews: "the Shiloh family".
Most of the young adults I talked to, like Nakeisha and Nicole, were attracted to program as little kids through camp, and then got involved in other ways as they grew up: like taking advantage of the resume writing programs; working with a mentor through a Stamford, Connecticut church; attending Wednesday night teen programs; becoming camp counselors; getting some financial assistance for college. Young adults like
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| Raquel, who raises her family, goes to school, and works in the Shiloh administrative offices; |
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| Sam, an EMT who has developed a close familial relationship with Shiloh staff; |
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| Jennifer, whose determination rise above being a neighborhood statistic drives her to excellence in school; |
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| Cynthia, a working college graduate who surrounds herself with a community wherever she goes; |
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| and Sade, a likable, friendly college student who has sacrificed for her family. |
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| Angela, whose competence and watchfulness have served her well as director of the camp kitchen; |
I enjoyed liking these people as I interviewed them. Not everyone who has been to camp continues to invest their time in the program, but these folks did, although in some cases it was not always easy to do that. For one thing, the Shiloh offices are now in the Manhattan Church of Christ's building, in the heart of gleaming, hyper-wealthy Manhattan, a part of the city that is so worldly sometimes that it seems otherworldly. The building that houses Shiloh is not in the neighborhood of the South Bronx, where most of the kids it serves are from, so to get to the Wednesday night teen program, for example, they have to make a physical journey in order to get there. And there have been other challenges (and sometimes chaos) in their respective lives that I've never had to face, sometimes in their neighborhoods and sometimes in their own homes. But these folks have worked. And Shiloh, by making a significant investment in each relationship, has been Shiloh sexy enough for folks to feel loved and supported there, a place where they can just be themselves with no mask to wear.
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