The Council Room

[Jim Culleton]

Well Mike you got me started! Mr. Cooper I vaguely remember but I probably didn't have too much contact with him.

Most, if not all, of the councilors were great guys although as a kid I did feel intimidated by a few. Mr. Slocum and Norm Risser were a couple that come to mind. I was never in "Sloc's" tent as a Senior but he always did seem to exude a sense of power . . . . . . . "it's either my way or the highway" kinda thing. That was probably a false impression on my part. In all fairness, however "Sloc" did have a reserved "seat" in the Senior Pines which added to his sense of power.

Norm Risser had a sense of power as well and seemed to run a tight ship. I thought that maybe he subscribed to the "it's my way or the highway" theme as well. I always loved his line . . . . . "You ain't gonna catch any fish in those trees" ! I think he also failed me on my 1st rowboat test at age 11. What . . . . . why?? Just because I was rowing in circles ? Of course Norm invented the term "PINES" and heaven forbid if one ever said they were going to the bathroom for fear of being relegated to KP or PINES duty for the rest of the summer !

The West Point guys always intimidated me as we knew we couldn't pull anything off on them!

Great memories!

Jim
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'56 - J-9 J. Moulton
'57 - J-11 J. Moulton
'58 - J-4 E. Web Dann, S. Hood
'59 - S-6 P. Leavitt
'60 - S-2 F. Avantaggio
'61 - JA-1 RK Irons
'62 - C-9 JC with P. Freeland
'63 - C-1 JC with S. Borger
'64 - C-6 Councilor

[Bob Kennington]

Agree 100% with your assessments of Norm Risser and Mr. Slocum (from my mid-1950s years of attendance).

I'm fuzzy on Mr. Cooper, though. Photo?
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Gordon B. (Father) Wyanoke ~1929-1937
Midget C-1 (1952, 53) (Belden, Edwards)
Junior J-7 (1954, 55) (Scheirer)
1967-1971 Military-Naval Security Group
Sister: Winnemont 1955-56

Blue: there's another color?

[Mike Freeland]

OK, here we go. Some of the "Mr"s we've been talking about, pre-1957:






These are from the '57 catalog.

Mr Risser looks as though he's just got a whiff of something unpleasant, or maybe heard a joke he was having trouble responding appropriately to. Mr. Cooper looks more like someone I'd take my taxes to than a Midget Camp head councilor (and believe me, the two are mutually exclusive).

I threw Henny Kowlton in there because he used to run the Saco trips and he was a GAS! Really great guy, even though he looked like that.

Except for ILV, there's nary a gray hair on any of these guys except for a couple here and there, putting them somewhere in their 30s, right? Considering most of the councilors were right in the middle of college, these guys were OLD.

I found Dick (aka "Mr.") Irons intimidating too, but I guess he wasn't, from the guys who mustered up the nerve to get to know him. I even found his kids imposing. Like father... Sheesh!

Then along comes a guy like Gunnar Engstrom, maybe the same age, and there wasn't an intimidating bone in his body, though he did command respect.

I was in Sloc's tent in '61, and when I found that out, I wanted to go home. Really, he was actually a pretty good guy, partially because he really didn't have much to do with us -- left us alone to get into our own trouble. I liked him for that, and he wasn't draconian when he was around either. Go figure.

One of the biggest shocks of my life came one day as I was driving out of Mass. on the Mass Turnpike, stopped at the toll booth and handed my toll to... wait for it... Sloc! You could have knocked me over with a bat. I think someone did. I don't even remember what year that was, but it was before camp closed (I moved to Colorado in '74). Now that I think of it, it was that trip - I was driving to Denver for the first time. Wow.

So anyway, Bob, do you remember F Meredith? (just for being so imposing, I always hoped his first name was Farnsworth or something equally un-imposing).
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'56-C-9 C. Mosher '57-C-9 Bill Feaster
'58-J-14 H. Peavy '59-J-11 G. Wood, C. Duncan
'60-S-8 R. Leavitt, D. Hemphill '61-S-1 E. Slocum
'62-JA-1 H. Dunbar '63-C-2 (JC)
'64-C-5, (JC) Councilor
'65-C-9 '66 - '72-J-8
'73-JA1 '75-J-6

[Jim Culleton]

[Bob Kennington]

[DavidAyars]

Interesting. I was only at Wyanoke for what were to be its last 11 seasons, and I think by the mid-1960s, from my perspective, intimidation as a leadership style must have fallen out-of-favor. Walt Scheirer and David Clemens set the standards for head councilor behavior in my era, standards that filtered down to those who served with and followed them. "Intimidating" is not a word anyone could apply to either one. We'd still hear stories about some of these pre-1960s guys. Those stories did not include Norm Risser, as I recall; Norm was perceived as a friendly grandfather type in most campers' eyes by the mid-1960s, fishing, or sitting on his "Dr.'s Cabin" porch. Warning us about the danger of rusty frying pans was about as scary as Norm got in my time.

I vaguely remember a West Point guy or two who came in and thought his tent group should be run like boot camp for plebes. Didn't somebody try to give out demerits? That didn't last. Some of the cadets were very well-liked particularly by their tent groups and would have made great long-term councilors if Uncle Sam didn't have other plans for them after their four-week stint at Wyanoke.

Some men could be strict about safety (e.g. waterfront), and some were more reserved than others, so some campers may have felt intimidated by them, but they were all genuinely warm and caring people and had many campers and staff members who looked up to them in a positive way. Or am I looking back at our staffs with rose-colored glasses?
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Camper: J-8 1965 (Kevin Ryan), J-8 1966 (Mike Freeland), S-6 1967 (Russ Hatch), S-3 1968 (Jeremy Cripps), and JA-2 1969 (Dan Mannis).
JC: J-2 1970 (Bill Bettison) and J-3 1971 (Gene Comella). Councilor 1972, J-5 1973, and JA-1 1974 & 1975

[Robert Vaughan]

I do remember most of these men - Mr Cooper did have two boys at camp and was from Winchester - I don't know if he was associated with the schools or what.

Norm Risser was a PE teacher from Nutley, NJ, who used to stop at our house in Massachusetts on his way back to NJ (maybe after he was retired). He was really an interesting guy. I remember the story that he would pull a bed outside and teach the juniors how to make it properly. I believe, however, that when I got to the Junior Camp in 1958 that Webb Dann was the Head Councilor.

Henny Knowlton was famous in Winchester for his coaching and always scared me a bit at the waterfront (probably because he knew what a great swimmer I was!)

So many of these men were my Dad's contemporaries and they socialized at Hill Top, playing cards and whatever.

Mr Irons was quite a bright man, truly a scholar who taught at Groton I believe. He arranged for Don Budge to come to Wyanoke in the early 1960's I think and we all sat around on Senior Court 1 and watched him hit with Dick Irons and perhaps some others.

Just as an aside, even though I wasn't a great swimmer or waterfront guy, I believe that the instruction was outstanding and I feel that I could (or at least according to standards back then) have taught others how to swim as long as it was on the dock and only marginally in the water. This goes for so many other sports in other areas of camp life too. I was listening and trying most of the time.

[Pat Donovan]

I was so little when I started at Camp that Everyone was intimidating. I don't think there was a person there younger or smaller than me. I was 6 1/2 and there for a month and don't remember a thing about it except that Dick O'Hara was my councilor and that our cabin lit the campfire once, I think as the youngest group at Camp

There were a lot of councilors I just didn't have anything to do with over the years. I knew who they were, but never connected in any way. Mr. Slocum, Mr. Risser, Mr. Cooper, Mr. Berard for example. (Note that I never even thought of them on a first-name basis.) I guess I pretty much hung with the ones I liked and that were responsive to me. One of the most eventful summers I had was in J-10 with Bob Fox, and Dave Bentley as JC. I was with Bob for 3 years, maybe because he could put up with me, but Dave and I spent a lot of time bouncing off each other. That may have been Dexter Perry's last year at camp, and I think Jeff Cushman was still around - they and I had been cabin- and tent-mates since Cabintown - and there was a certain amount of individualism expressed that didn't fit in well with the Camp routines. Mr. Bentley had at least one heart-to-heart with me that summer. I swear I was having a great time, but he didn't see it that way and my point of view didn't prevail.

I well remember Don Budge visiting, and over the years have marveled that a person of his stature was there. Since my last year was 1960, Bob, it was then or before.

Pat Donovan

[Steve Hood]

I must say that I never really thought that there were very many intimidating councilors. In all my years at Wyanoke, I really had only one "major run-in" with a councilor, and this involved Everett Slocum.

I was a "waterfront person" and felt out of place on the track. Sloc was a track-baseball person, and I am not even sure if he knew how to swim.

BMB was concerned that too many people were wearing baseball caps in the dining room and wanted to put a stop to it. At one of the councilor's meetings, be made a big deal out of this and wanted all the councilors to help enforce it. I think he was referring to campers, but Sloc was a major offender, and consistently wore his Fessenen School cap in the dining room. BMB asked me, as bugler, to help enforce this because I usually hung out in the midget dining room before it was time to blow "soupy-soupy" to quiet things down for announcements and the blessing/prayer for the meal.

Soon there afternoon, at breakfast, I was waiting to get started and there was Sloc, wearing his Fessended cap. I politely asked him to take it off, and reminded him of what BMB had said. Well, "the shit hit the fan." Sloc musts have been in a bad mood to begin with, but he verbally let me have a piece of his mind, and physically put his hands on my ears, squeezed them again my head, and shook me pretty hard. It hurt, both physically and emotionally. I was actually crying when BMB came over and told me to blow soupy-soupy. BMB realized my distress and asked what happened. I told him. After breakfast, I noticed that BMB and Sloc were sitting on the porch of the guest house, and I'm sure I know why.
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1951: C-9. F. Whitemore, P. Durkee.
1952-53: J-11. E. Wilkins.
1957: S-7 D. Irons, JA
1958: J-4 W.Dann JC
1959: J-1 G.Engstrom JC
1960-61-63: J-6. Councillor
1964: JA-2. Councillor