Dear Readers:

This summer we are celebrating Camp Timberlane’s twentieth year and we hope it will be the most successful year we have ever had. To this point I believe we have attained that goal. Having just finished our first visiting weekend, I have never heard so many compliments from the parents and surprisingly, not one complaint. Usually someone is always unhappy about one thing or another, but this year everyone seems to be happy. What makes a camp happy and complaint free? That is the subject of this article.

I believe there are two main ingredients to making Timberlane have a successful summer. The first one is my job. At the beginning of the summer, I spend hours and hours trying to place everyone in the correct cabin. I work from age lists, grad lists, use last year’s cabin lists, and try to see who should be with whom. Most of the boys have requests, but then many of the boys I know would just not fit together. Then there is the geographical placement, I don’t wall al the kids in a cabin from the same city. So after hours of work, I try to come up with cabin groupings which will make everyone happy. I believe to my knowledge, not one person has come to me to complain about which cabin he is in.

The second ingredient is, of course, your staff. A good staff can make your camp. Timberlane has had a tradition of cultivating its own for so many years. This can be a blessing or it can be a disaster. Having traditions continued is helped by having former campers becoming staff members. They love camp, have grown up here and really get into camp live. They are here because they love it. However, bad traits can also be continued and passed along and that is what you have to look out for. Many ties you have to make tough decisions and not invite staff back even though they have been here for years. You must do what is best for the camp. This summer, we have the finest staff we have ever had. All the parents commented on this over the visiting weekend.

Every cap has all the activities, and most have decent facilities but, placement of boys in cabins with the right counselors is what can make or break a summer. I hope that your boys all agree on this and that they will rave about the summer of 1980.

Mark Faiwell