Camp Loyaltown; a short journey in the way-back machine

A few weeks spent at Camp Loyaltown last a lifetime.

My summer vacation 65 years ago in Hunter, New York.

This past summer one or my granddaughters went to “try-out camp.” Not the baseball kind of tryouts, but the summer camp kind. It’s a smart gimmick run by many summer camps where potential campers for the following year get to spend a couple of days at camp to see how they would do being far from folks.

Within a couple of hours of her arrival the camp had her busy zip-lining and just as quickly sent a photo of a very happy camper to her parents. Of course, they passed it on to me.

My granddaughter is eight, and her experience reminded me of my three weeks of sleepaway camp that I spent right before my 8th birthday in the summer of 1956. It was at Camp Loyaltown in Hunter, New York.

Much to my surprise, 65 years later, Camp Loyaltown still exists but unlike the Jewish-themed camp I attended, today it is, in the words of one blogger, “a camp that specially caters for people with both intellectual and developmental disabilities.”

Camp Loyaltown was created in 1948 and a July 18^th article of that year in the New York Times wrote about it.  The article headline reads, “Camp Loyaltown is dedicated in Catskills; Needy Boys Represent Many Races and Creeds.”  While the camp was to be non-sectarian, it “operated under Jewish dietary laws.”  It was to provide “a three weeks, all-expenses-paid, vacation.”  I was in 1956, I guess, “underprivileged” by someone’s standards.
Summers in Middle Village, Queens where I spent the first 12 years of my life were not exactly fun. It was always hot, and the biggest thrill of the day was when the Bungalow Bar ice cream truck made its evening trip up 75th Street where I lived. Weekends were especially brutal because my father sometimes worked on Saturday and Sunday. At least the polio vaccine had arrived, I don’t recall anyone being opposed to getting it, and we were no longer living under the cloud of that dreaded disease that spread rapidly during the summer months.

I was not involved in the decision making process about going to sleepaway camp. I do vividly remember my Aunt Ceil taking me by train from Middle Village into Manhattan to the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies building. I remember sitting in a large auditorium and then having a doctor give me a physical examination. I must have been ranked 1A because a few months later I was on my way!

Early one morning in August, my mother woke me, told me to get dressed and have breakfast because I was going to camp. My father carried a white laundry bag with my clothing down the stairs from our apartment. It was still gray outside, I hopped into my father’s Pontiac, also gray, and we headed off.

Unlike my experience getting my own kids off to summer camp, there was no conveniently located central drop off point.  We drove from Middle Village to a passenger ferry slip in Manhattan; I want to say I remember the name of the sign over the terminal saying, “B & O Railroad”, but it could have been the Erie Railroad.  In the terminal we were grouped by bunk number.  My father said goodbye and I was ready for camp.

We took the ferry to New Jersey and boarded a train. I had been on the subway in New York City before, but this was my first real train ride. In those days, seats were rattan, and there were two boys in each seat and the seats were flipped so we would face another two boys. I remember sitting by the window.

It was going to be a long ride and the camp was prepared.  At one point some counselors pulled and pushed a humongous Baby Ruth candy bar through the aisle.  They handed us a slip of paper and a pencil and asked us to write down our guess as to the number of peanuts in the candy bar.

The train ride went on and on, especially to a soon to be 8-year old kid. Suddenly there was a commotion in the aisle and counselors came through telling us there was no winner in the peanut guessing contest and then handed us a big piece of the delicious Baby Ruth. (To this day, it’s one of my favorite candy bars.)

At last, the train came to a stop. I don’t remember if we stopped in Hunter, New York or some other town that had a train station. In any event, we boarded yellow school buses (my first time on one) and headed off to Camp Loyaltown.

We passed under the camp gate and the bus dropped us off in a parking area. We were marched by our counselors up a small hill to our bunk. Can’t tell you the bunk number but it was a clapboard building with a big open room.

Marty, the counselor, told us he had to go to the office and instructed us “not to go near the lake.” Of course, as soon as he left, we went down to the lake.

The lake was not very large, but it was our lake and after taking a good look we ran back to the bunk to get yelled at by Marty for going to the lake. (The lake is still there at Camp Loyaltown but there’s a large swimming pool located nearby for campers to use. You can see it on the Web at this link to Camp Loyaltown photos.)

We were told to pick a cot and place our pillows alternately from head to toe; that way we wouldn’t spread any dreaded disease by breathing into the face of the boys on either side of us! And we were given our first instructions on how to make a bed using flat sheets and how to fold them with hospital corners. Easy-peasy.

There was a bathroom with a couple of stalls, shelves for our clothing and a shower.

For dinner, we walked up the hill to the dining room. I know it was a large room, but I don’t think it could hold the “1,000 persons” as stated in the NY Times article. Dinner was preceded by the saying of hamotzi, the customary Jewish prayer said before meals where bread was being served. After a while, I began saying the hamotzi over the microphone for the entire dining room. My Hebrew school education at the Hebrew Institute of Middle Village was paying off.

I’m not certain that we had prayer services. But one Friday night in 1992, we began to sing the lilting prayer “Yedid Nefesh,” which is customarily sung right before evening services. It was new to me that night, but as the singing started, I remembered the tune and the words. Was this a flashback to Camp Loyaltown? I just do not know.

One of the things that sticks in my mind was a poster that either sat on top of a large fireplace or was mounted on a bulletin board. It was an advertisement for a new motion picture, “Moby Dick,” starring Gregory Peck, playing at the Hunter Theatre. No, we weren’t taken to see this movie, but we did go on at least one hike. It was the day Marty told us we were going to see an inclined plane. I was excited.

After walking for a distance, Marty said “there’s the inclined plane.” I looked and didn’t see any airplane pitched into the ground at an angle. Well, I learned that Marty was not referring to a crashed airplane, but to a slope, the incline, in a hill that allows for movement up and down the hill using the principals of physics.

Inclined planes were most popularly used in New Jersey along the Morris Canal. Newark, New Jersey had a long inclined plane carrying the canal barges up and down from a point above the city to the Passaic River down below. The incline can still be seen today, but it’s now known as Raymond Boulevard!

Our days began with the sound of reveille being played over a loudspeaker. We dressed and then went to a centrally located flagpole where the flag was raised. We said the Pledge of Allegiance and sang the Star-Spangled Banner. Our evenings concluded with Taps.

After the flag raising we were off to breakfast.

Our days were filled with activities. There was baseball, soccer, and swimming, which was mandatory. This was the summer when I learned how to swim.

The lake that I mentioned was divided into three parts separated by ropes. There was what I have to call the shallow lake. It allowed us to walk into the water to mid-waist. It had a cement floor that would become slippery from algae. It was a counselor’s job to brush the cement each day to get rid of the algae. In this part of the lake, we splashed and learned how to do the “dead man’s float,” in order to alleviate our fear of going under the water. It was a fear I never had because I had been overwhelmed and submerged by large waves at Rockaway Beach many times.

To the left of the shallow area was the “deep water.” Unlike the shallow part, this area of the lake had a dock with a ladder. It was in this portion of the lake where we would be “certified” as being able to swim by taking a test—treading water for 30 seconds and not going under while swimming! I passed.

The remainder of the lake was off-limits. Visions of water moccasins danced in our heads; we didn’t realize that if there were snakes in the water, ropes wouldn’t stop them from reaching us!

There was also quiet time each day so we could write postcards home. My mother had given me pre-addressed and pre-paid post cards to write to her and my aunts. I remember lying on the bunk floor to write my postcards. Postage in those days was 3 cents for a postcard!

Then, one day catastrophe struck; I lost my Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap.!

I think it is a given that sons (and daughters) become fans of the same baseball team as their dad. I don’t think this is a conscious decision, but one born from being taken to baseball games. Of course, your father is not going to take you to a game at the dreaded enemy team’s stadium, so, fandom follows. In my case it was the Brooklyn Dodgers which my dad rooted for. The Dodgers had won the World Series in 1955 and its fans were still flying the following year when they were in first place and what would certainly be another World Series with the hated New York Yankees.

I had left for Camp Loyaltown with my cherished Brooklyn Dodger cap and, sometime in the second week, it was gone. I have no recollection how I lost the cap. I sent a postcard home and told my mother that I had lost my cap.

The following week I received a package the size of a shoebox and when I tore off the brown wrapping paper, there, inside a shoebox, was a new Brooklyn Dodgers cap. Happy I was.

The remainder of my days at Camp Loyaltown are now a blur. But there came the day when we boarded out buses and headed for the train ride back to New York City. There was a newsletter that they gave us to bring with us. In it I was named “most talkative camper.”

The train brought us to the ferry terminal where we had departed from 3 weeks earlier, and there waiting for me was my mother and father. Marty handed my duffel bag to my father and got a $2 or $3 tip for taking such good care of me. (In 2021 dollars that would be about $20-$30.)

I had had a good summer. And six decades later, I remember it fondly.

Well, that's what I have to say. Stephen M. Flatow