By Troika Brodsky
For 60 years the Camp Nebagamon winter office was located in St. Louis, MO. Both Muggs and Janet Lorber called St. Louis home, as did Nardie and Sally Stein throughout their years running camp. As a lifelong resident of St. Louis, that fact is a particular point of pride for me as a member of the Camp Nebagamon community. Not only does St. Louis boast a unique and anchoring connection to this institution we all love, but as you might imagine, having two different sets of camp directors based here for all those years meant that a lot of campers from those early decades came from here, too. Over time, between second and third generation campers and word of mouth referrals through the local community, St. Louis now boasts one of the deepest benches of Camp Nebagamon alumni located in any one city. To that point, you might imagine my giddiness when I was tasked with planning an event specifically for our St. Louis regional alumni as one of my first priorities when I joined the year-round team at Camp Nebagamon as Director of Development and Alumni Engagement.
When working to plan this alumni get-together, by far the most challenging piece of the puzzle was locating and inviting our alumni. Camp Nebagamon has a pretty robust database of information for our alumni community that includes not just contact information, but also the specific years at camp each of us has spent as both campers and staff members. It’s built on a platform called CampMinder, which is the system you are asked to login to if you want to access our photo archives as well as being the system we use to manage our camper, staff, and Family Camper data and communications. The alumni database is a really remarkable and useful repository of camp history… but it is also not a perfect system. We have an ever growing and evolving community of alumni, and as people move, change phone numbers and email addresses, or even sadly pass away, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to keep it up-to-date. While we do our best to keep things current, we really are reliant on you, the Camp Family, to help us with this project by either updating your own Campminder records directly by logging in through our website or by emailing us with your changes of address, phone number, email, etc. so that we can make the updates manually. All of this means that when it came time to get the word out about our St. Louis alumni event, we sent emails, made phone calls, wrote about it in the Arrowhead and on our social media accounts, and I’m sure we still didn’t reach everyone. But every time we create an opportunity to connect with our community like this, we have the potential to reconnect and bring more of our Camp Family back into the fold.
This past weekend I had the unique honor of hosting around 30 alumni from the greater St. Louis region, representing an astounding nine decades of camping at Nebagamon. We had alumni whose first year at camp was Adam and Stephanie’s first year as directors in 2004…and we had an alumni in attendance whose first year at camp was 1944! The range of experience and stories and memories on display was truly inspiring and moving. In addition to some drinks, ice cream, and the requisite toasted ravioli and Provel cheese covered St. Louis-style pizza (you either love it or hate it), there was great conversation, a special slideshow featuring our St. Louis alums, a great video showing off what camp looks like in the modern era, and even a special exhibit of archival letters and mementos from my father, L.D. Brodsky’s time as a camper and staff member in the 50’s and 60’s. All in all the vibe was great and a good time seemed to be had by all. I have had the good fortune of attending both the 75th and 90th Anniversary celebrations as well as many camp reunions over the years and it never ceases to amaze and humble me to hear from men who are decades removed from their time as campers and staff members at Nebagamon who still passionately speak to their summers at Camp as having been singularly formative and foundational to their life experience and the people they are today. I couldn’t be more grateful for the opportunity to commune with these members of our incredible alumni community in St. Louis this past weekend and I can not wait to bring this show on the road in the near future.
Keep The Fires Burning.
Thank you to our St. Louis friends and alumni who came out to help celebrate our first Camp Nebagamon Alumni Assembly: Art Auer (1944-’45, ’47, ’53-’54), Michael Brodsky (2000-’06, ’10), Troika Brodsky (1987-’93, ’95-2007, ’22-’23), Andy Cohen (2004-’10, ’12-’17, ’19, ’21), Mike Cosgrove (1970, ’72–’79, ’81, ’90), Elliot Dole (1988-’90, ’92), Joe Dreyer (1965-’68, ’70, ’98), Bob Dubinsky (1978-’83, ’86-’87), Josh Goldman (1987-’91, ’93-’95, ’98, 2000, ’02-’04), Mike Goldman (1978, ’80-’83, ’85-’90, ’92), Rand Goldstein (1973), Jim Guest (1980-’81, ’84-’89, ’92-’94), Tim Jordan, John Kalishman (1974-’77, ’79-’83, ’85), Adam Kaplan (1977-’84, ’86-’94, 2000, ’04-’24), Kerry Kornfeld (1973-’77, ’79, ’81), Brad Kovach (1982-’87, ’89, ’99), Bill Mendelsohn (1963, ’65-’67, ’69), Zach Muzik (2004-’10, ’12-’17, ’19, ’21-’23), Spence Myer (2002-’07, ’09-’12, ’14), James Nahlik (1977-’80), Nancy Nahlik, Noah Prince-Goldberg (2000-’03, ’08), Bradley Richter (1995-’97, ’99-2000, ’03), Jim Rosen (1964-’67, ’72-’75), James Schulman (1990-’96, 2000-’04), Rand Shapiro (1965-’75, 2004, ’08-’15), Bob Watel (1958-’61), Bob Wegusen (1966-’70, ’73, ’76), Lon Zimmerman (1953-’55, ’57).
*Sincerest apologies to anyone missed in this listing.
