DUMMERSTON — Janice Martin, 96, remembers being awarded a scholarship to Green Mountain Camp for Girls - a place that, even though it was just 6 miles from her childhood home on Canoe Brook Road, “felt very far away.”
“I was a country bumpkin, with very little socialization in 1938, when I was 12 years old,” says Martin, now a resident of Brattleboro.
As GMC celebrates its 106th anniversary this summer, it remains the longest-continuously-run camp in Vermont, and one of a handful across the nation.
“In the beginning, there were six tents on wooden platforms with cots inside. There were six girls to share the tent with me. We were all about my age. We walked down to the West River to bathe and swim,” Martin says.
In fact, the cots were Army surplus from World War I, along with mattresses that needed to be stuffed with straw. That same equipment was used through the 1960's, when I was a camper there.
GMC has a positive and powerful history, begun during an age when trousers were not yet the fashion and women wore tight, restrictive corsets. Young women at camp donned pantaloons and sailor tops, as men were not allowed on the campus, allowing them a freedom that most girls could not enjoy at home in their long dresses.
Today, that tradition continues, though for different reasons, as girls and young women of the Muslim faith are allowed to be without head scarves while attending camp.
To this day, mirrors cannot be found on the property, and as the years have gone by, electronics have entered the ranks of unwelcome guests. Many of today's campers arrive without ever having spent a full day (much less a week) without using a cell phone or tablet.
GMC is now, and always has been, a step back in time to the days of playing sports in a field of grass, singing around a campfire, swimming, expressing yourself in arts and crafts, and enjoying hiking trips to a nearby waterfall.
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At the time of the camp's 25th anniversary in 1941, the Brattleboro Reformer wrote of the history of the camp.
“It was in 1917 that Mrs. Sarah Bradley Gamble and Mrs. Grace Holbrook Haskell conceived the idea of having a camp for rural girls. The idea has since materialized and has made substantial growth in its program and achievement. Under Miss Edith Bradley, its present director, 150 girls between the ages of eight and 18 are attending throughout a period of six weeks.”
That population has increased to 420 children this summer.
The Reformer article goes on to explain how Gamble and Haskell originally set the camp up at Marlboro's South Pond in 1917 using equipment borrowed from the Boy Scouts. By 1919, the camp moved to its current location in Dummerston to quarters owned by Wilhelmine Octavia Day, who lived above the site. She later gave the land to the camp.
In those early years, the camp accepted produce in lieu of cash from families who could not afford to pay the full tuition.
Clara Robinson of Jamaica can attest to that method of tuition exchange. Her mother, Lucy Martin, of Newfane, attended camp when she was 10 years old in the early 1920s.
“My grandfather was a real estate broker, and they had a farm,” she remembers with a smile. “He paid my mother's way by bringing bags of potatoes.”
In diaries that remain as artifacts of those early days, camp directors' observations evoke the sound of horses' hooves coming up the dirt road, bearing carriages of families with their campers on board.
Robinson followed her mother's footsteps to camp in 1950, this time earning herself a scholarship.
“We didn't have a lot of money. I had a job sweeping the cabin in exchange for tuition. I went to camp as many summers as I could,” she said. “I so enjoyed it. I was happy my daughters could attend in the 1960s and '70s.”
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By 1925, Hildreth Hall, the camp building made of pine and used as a meeting place, was given to the camp by Mabel C. Hildreth in honor of her father-in-law, E. L. Hildreth, “a man whose qualities she and her husband greatly admired,” according to the Reformer profile.
Hildreth, a well-known printer at the time, housed his shop where the Harmony Parking lot now stands in Brattleboro.
One day, when I worked as the camp's executive director in the early 2000s, a car from Connecticut arrived with visitors, one of whom was a former camper, then in her 90s. When she saw the outside of Hildreth Hall, she sighed with pleasure.
“It happened in here!” she said.
We went inside the building, and the woman searched the floor.
“Yes. It was here. This is the spot,” she said excitedly.
Confused, and a little concerned about what might happen, I watched in surprise as she broke into a wide smile, and with a soft voice and the most delicate of steps, began to sing and dance.
“Tea for two, and two for tea,” she sang in a quiet but strong voice, as she began to soft shoe to the song. She remembered every line and every movement.
When she finished dancing and singing, she breathlessly said, “I'd always wished I could learn to soft shoe, and right here, on this spot, I did. I was 12 years old.”
She was beaming.
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While the stories from past campers vary, for them the magic remains.
Nancy Howard Baker, formerly of Brattleboro, attended camp from the time she was 11 years old in the early '60s. She went through the counselor-in-training program and stayed on until she was 15 years old, working the three two-week sessions all summer.
“I first attended because a kind local woman gave me a scholarship,” she says.
Baker most enjoyed making new friends and remarked that living in cabins was a natural place to get to know other campers. Cabins in both the junior and senior units were built in the late 1940s, replacing the tents.
“When I started going to camp, the cabins weren't closed in like they are now. There were no doors and no screens, and we all got eaten alive by mosquitoes!” says Baker with a hearty laugh.
“There are many women from camp with whom I'm still in touch,” she says. “Friends made at camp can last a lifetime.”
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In 1928, the white farmhouse on the property was purchased as an administration building. Built close to the turn of the 20th century, “the White House,” as it has always been called, is loved by campers and counselors alike.
The White House's secrets include a hidden box, built inside a staircase, used to squirrel money and valuables away from the eyes of strangers since a trip to the bank in Brattleboro would take most of a day by horse and carriage.
The White House has served as a counselor lounge, a camp office, and was most beloved as the camp store. Campers would stand on the long, winding porch in front of the house, and they would transact their business at a window, where they would purchase postcards, pencils, bathing caps, and a few novelties, all from a card table inside the house.
At an upcoming reunion, camp alumnae and friends will have one last opportunity to tour the White House. At the end of the current camp season in August, the building will be coming down and, in its place, an energy efficient, green building will house offices and the camp director year-round.
Alumnae can leave the reunion with a souvenir - a piece of the White House - by donating to the new house building fund.
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Billie Slade, the executive director of the camp, wishes the White House could stay but understands the reasoning behind replacing it.
“While it is a house full of memories for all alumnae, it would be more expensive to fix it than replace it at this point in time,” she says sadly.
The daughter of Clara Robinson, Slade was the third generation in her family to attend camp. The generations have extended to Slade's daughter and her grandchildren.
Slade will retire this December as the camp's executive director for 12 years. She was a camper and counselor for 11 years, and she spent 12 additional years serving on the camp's board of directors.
Cathy Martin, currently the music director, will also step down in August.
The two have worked together as partners to bring GMC to the healthiest place it has been in its history over these last 12 years.
“The Board of Trustees, many volunteers, and donations have allowed us to have made so many improvements to the campus over the years, from new beds and mattresses to rebuilding Hildreth Hall and adding a beautiful stone staircase, to ready camp for the next 100 years,” says Slade with pride.
For her part, Martin has focused on the continuation of tradition and camp culture through music.
A professional musician, Martin uses her keyboard, banjo, guitar, and 15 ukuleles to bring history and music to campers, and to allow them an opportunity to learn to play the ukulele themselves.
GMC has always treasured a focus on music to bring people together, from its earliest days, when campers would flip through a white booklet of typed song lyrics, to the 1960s, when Camp Co-director Isidore Battino would bring his friend Pete Seeger along as they taught us songs of peace and understanding on their banjos, to the current day where Martin brings music from past and present.
The happy voices of singing campers can still be heard all along Camp Arden Road, which borders the camp to the west, according to the neighbors, just as they have for over 100 years.
“We gather at 8:45 right after breakfast with 15 minutes of singing to start our day,” says Martin, “and we sing at the end of the day as well. We continue the songs of our own childhood like 'We Shall Overcome' and 'Deep Blue Sea,' and we sing songs that have themes of peace in the world, understanding, and friendship.”
Campers sing those songs “along with the goofy songs that are always fun to do,” she says.
“What you learn when you are young stays with you,” says Martin. “Being able to see kids dancing on the last day to the theme song that was written just for camp is a beautiful thing. It's rewarding to believe that these songs will get carried on into the future, just as they did through our own childhood.”
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On this summer day, four young campers sit at a picnic table, pausing from their activities to speak with their grandmothers. Claire, 8, and her sister Alice, 5, from Helenville, Wisconsin are Slade's granddaughters. Ada, 7, and her sister Geneva, 5, of Windham, are mine.
Slade, Martin, and I all met in the junior unit at camp in 1965, when we were 8 years old. We have remained lifelong friends. Fifty-eight years later, we sit with our granddaughters who share cabins, just as we had so many years ago.
What do these new campers like about GMC?
With a smile and enthusiasm, Ada says, “I love sleeping over. I'm on the bottom bunk, and my friend Claire sleeps over me!”
Claire sits smiling at her new friend.
Alice joins in.
“Geneva and I are in the same cabin too! Right next to each other!”
The girls look at each other, all smiles, as they explain how much they love the songs they are singing, the swimming lessons, the art they're creating in the crafts barn, and especially, the new friends they're making.
Slade and I are a little overwhelmed at the scene.
“Could you have possibly imagined this happening when we were kids?” she says shaking her head.
“Not in a million years,” I say.
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The 106th reunion of Green Mountain Camp for Girls takes place on Saturday, July 15 at the camp (565 Green Mountain Camp Rd., Dummerston). Come as early as 4 p.m. to reconnect to campus and camp friends. A spaghetti dinner will be served at 6 p.m., followed by s'mores and singing around the campfire to the songs of yesterday led by Music Director Cathy Martin. Admission is by donation, with all proceeds earmarked for the building of the new White House.