St. Matthew’s Summer Camp, celebrating its 50th summer, is inviting all past and present campers, staff and their families to a 50th anniversary celebration in St. Matthew’s meadow on Saturday, June 26 from 5 to 9 p.m. Members of the anniversary committee are hoping that all past and present campers, staff and their families will attend. Many campers have a long-term connection to the camp. Palisadian Bruce Harlan, who was a camper at the school in the 1970s, started working at the camp in 1980 as an arts and crafts assistant, then continued working at different jobs and eventually served as camp director until 1999. Harlan, whose son Kelly, 6, is entering the camp for the first time this year, is now a science teacher at St. Matthew’s School. ‘The main thing about the camp for me is that it’s one of the few things that really celebrates kids being kids,’ says Harlan. ‘It doesn’t have any fancy equipment, no video games, waterskiing or trips to Disneyland. It’s just kids with groups of friends and counselors. They run through the hills and get dirty, make up games, with no goal other than to enjoy summer and enjoy being a kid. In the Palisades, that’s pretty amazing.’ The camp, now led by Erik Warren and Katie Wood, was started in 1954. There are 16 groups of kids, divided into boys and girls, with two counselors per group and a total of 240 campers. Groups make up names for themselves, such as Road Runners, Scrubbing Bubbles and Minor Aches and Pains. In preparing for the 50th anniversary, Harlan and his co-committee members found pictures from the camp in the 1950s, and noticed that the camp activities, such as making forts and playing hide-and-seek, haven’t changed much. The campers still play games such as Ditch, chasing each other through the hills of the 34-acre property off of Bienveneda. Jolly Roger’s Cave on the campus is a favorite storytelling spot. Campers come for the entire six-week session, which Harlan says allows for team-building and relationships, more so than camps that operate two-week sessions. There is often a waiting list for campers, although the camp always reserves space for about a dozen children from the Oakwood area of Venice who attend free of charge. The counselors make the camp, Harlan says, adding that the camp receives about 150 applications each summer for counselor jobs. ‘They’re creative and energetic. It’s a really sought after job.’ The staff, many of whom were once campers themselves, often stay for several years. One college student and one teenager are in charge of each group. In addition to the planned activities’morning chapel (songs, prayers and a thought for the day), swimming at the outdoor pool and music or arts and crafts’the counselors make up each day’s activities for their group. The camp also features its own traditions’World Day with a kid-created Town Fair, Costume Day with skits, and Tournament Day with a watermelon-eating contest, relay races and water fights. ‘Gus Alexander was director of the camp most of the time the camp has been in existence,’ Harlan says. ‘He was a huge personality who made the camp the way it was for close to 30 years.’ On the 50th reunion Web site, John Meyers, who is starting his 24th year on staff at the camp, wrote: ‘The memories that I will take to the grave are of the teenagers and young adults in our community who year after year become the loving older brothers and sisters to our campers. This ‘Camper-Counselor Relationship’ as Gus defined it is the very heart and core of St. Matthew’s Day Camp… It is no coincidence that of the 50 persons we had on staff last summer, all but 11 of them were former campers.’ ‘We have an esprit de corps we’ve never seen in other camps,’ Meyers, the athletic director at Our Lady of Malibu School, told the Palisadian-Post. ‘I feel I’m very lucky to be a part of it.’ Organizers are hoping for a large turnout at the reunion at St. Matthew’s meadow. RSVP to smdc@stmatthews.com or 573-7787, ext. 6. For more information, go to www.stmatthews.com/smdc50.html.
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