Alumni recall the stories behind the names of their big trips:

SURVIVAL BIG TRIP (1964)

Larry Cartwright:

We were going to make CN history by putting into Quetico Provincial Park on the Gunflint Trail and then taking out at the Boundary Waters Canoe Area on the Sawbill Trail. Our trip was going to encompass the two historic canoe country access roads.

The weather was against us from day one. As we crossed the Saganaga Lake expanse, an annoying headwind became a howling, threatening force by afternoon. There were periods when it was clear that we were making zero headway. It was an anxious time for the counselors, who were usually not much given to anxiety. We finally got the slight let-up we needed, allowing us to struggle into Cache Bay and set up a campsite. Day two was our best weather window, but we couldn’t take advantage of it. Tony Frankel popped a get-this-boy-to-a-doctor respiratory infection, and we had to sit tight on Cache Bay while Dave Lass backtracked to Grand Marais Hospital with Tony.

On day three, the fierce wind returned and we were pinned down at Cache Bay for the better part of a week. It dropped below freezing early one morning, and dusted us with snow for a few minutes; the campers slept through it. When the wind subsided and we were able to make our escape, the rains began, day after day. We found a way to call CN and make arrangements to be picked up at Moose Lake. We only managed to cover about half the distance envisioned in our robust original plan.

THE OKEFENOKEE BIG TRIP (1976)

Jim Hensel:

Planning a Big Trip involved many things: food, route, understanding the capabilities of the campers. Of course, once on trail there are many unknowns. On the trip I led, I was quite certain I would have a wonderful and memorable experience. Great kids, great route, and most of the weather looked great. But then, once you get out into the wilderness, seemingly small errors build to larger events. On the map, what looked like a perfectly matched stream towards a portage ended up being a bog-filled swamp adventure. Once we were convinced this stream was in fact not leading to the portage, our 90-minute trek had to be reversed. One could have easily viewed this diversion as an error, but we decided to embrace the bog. I mean how often do you spend quality time waist deep in a swamp while at camp? Hence, The Okefenokee Big Trip.

DARK SIDE OF THE LOON BIG TRIP (1977)

Josh Davis:

We did two mammoth night paddles on the trip. One was the entire length of Agnes. During these paddles, the loons were singing the whole time. Spectacular! A couple of days later while sitting around the “Have a smoke” portage, discussing what to name the trip, Steve Rivkin mentioned the Pink Floyd album that was so popular then (and now)—Dark Side of the Moon. Tim Werthan put the loon in place of moon, and we  knew that we had the name. The plaque was easy. Matches the album cover.

TRIP (1982)
Keith Abeles:

In 1982 Camp offered a “Long Trip” for the first time, a 27-day canoe adventure to Canada’s Quetico Provincial Park. Nine of us went. It was the longest wilderness trip Camp had ever offered, and it turned out to be an incredible experience for everyone. We named our trip TRIP. We wrote TRIP in extra large letters, on a short, but much wider than normal Big Trip plaque.  We cut the plaque extra wide to symbolize the length of our expedition. We also wrote some other information in smaller font, including our names, a number of hard-to-believe things that we claimed happened while out, and our oft repeated Long Trip slogan: “We Paddle, We Eat, We Sleep.”

Partly we named it TRIP because we thought that would make for an amusing and unique name. But more than that, the 27-day experience was a huge deal for all of us. It was the most significant undertaking of our lives at that point. We saw amazing sights, endured many challenges, and experienced some very high highs and low lows. We were all changed by our time on Long Trip. In the end we felt no name could convey the nature of our experience and do it justice. Once someone suggested TRIP, we quickly rallied around it.

THE MURPHY’S LAW BIG TRIP (1983)

Jim Koretz:

My first trip to Isle Royale was on my eighth grade big trip—the 1978 “Out Foxed Big Trip,” named for the foxes that made their way into one of our backpacks and ate the GORP right after we landed on the island. When I returned to Isle Royale four years later as a junior trip staff counselor, our senior counselor convinced the rest of us that washing mold off beef sticks on day 11 of the trip would make them safe to eat.  Naturally, most of us started vomiting in the middle of the night all over the camp ground called Daisy Farm—thus it became the “The Curse of Daisy Farm Big Trip.”  So when I had a third opportunity to lead a trip to Isle Royale as a senior counselor, I figured it would be a perfect 13 days, just based on statistics.

And it was, until the large metal hull boat that tendered us from the Grand Portage, MN to Windigo, Isle Royale landed on the island. From then on, as our trip name implies, everything that could go wrong, did. But who cares? The low point of the trip was an illness that tore through the group and forced several days of base camp. David Hirsch, the junior counselor, eventually got such a high fever that he had to be flown out on a sea plane, and Scott Diamond was flown in to replace him. The most dramatically ill was Mike Gordon, who was very allergic to a bee or hornet that stung him. I remember holding the epi-pen, ready to inject, but not administering it because Mike was breathing just fine. With him being sick plus the allergic reaction, he looked like death warmed over. All that being said, it was still lots of fun, and the majority of the guys on this trip are still life-long friends!

I NEED A MAALOX BIG TRIP (1989)

Steve Fisher:

The name was chosen because each member of the trip, including Jon Star and me, got some sort of stomach ailment during the trip, and it seemed that more days than not, someone was dealing with these gastronomical issues. This made some of the days very long, especially when camping and paddling in Quantico where there are no boxes to go to the bathroom at campsites (unlike the BWCA in the U.S.). We almost went through all of the toilet paper, all of the antacids, and all of the diarrhea medication in the medicine kit. The source of all of the problems was two things:  First, we caught and ate a lot of fish. However, I remember one night Jon and I tried to take various ingredients (including some dried vegetable packets and whatever else we had leftover) and make a fish stew because we were at the end of the trip and everyone was tired of pasta and Rice-A-Roni after ten days.  Second, we had another meal in the middle of the trip that consisted only of dehydrated ingredients, including dehydrated tofu and beans. This also did not go over well with our stomachs.

END OF THE RAINBOW BIG TRIP (2000)

Ben Edmunds:

I was lucky to lead a handful of Big Trips, and usually the weather in Quetico in early August is perfect—day time temps in the high 70s and overnights in the mid 60s. But August 2000 was a different story; it was wet and rainy. Of all the Quetico trips that I was part of, the 2000 Big Trip was the bleakest weather-wise, and I wasn’t the only one to notice it. John Kramer was the senior trip staffer, and he agreed. Our six campers were all relatively experienced trippers, and they too were surprised by how wet it was. I think I ended up reading five or six books on trail because of how much time we had to spend in our tents to stay dry. Despite the weather, the trip itself was not dreary. Everyone was in good spirits, and there was that unavoidable bittersweet feeling of ‘the end being in sight’ that characterizes so many ninth-grade Queticos.

In any case, around day 10 or 12, the weather finally broke, and we were paddling down a small lake in the southern part of the Park, somewhere near Sarah Lake. As the sun came out, we saw a rainbow that looked like it emanated directly from the water—we actually got to see the end of the rainbow. Nothing comes that easily though, and right where the light met water we saw a different site: where there should have been a pot of gold, there was a dead moose lying in the water. The campers thought the moose was headless (though, in hindsight, I doubt it). As I recall, all of us thought that the image summed up the bittersweet feelings we had about the trip—enthusiasm despite the bad weather, anxiety and excitement for the end of the campers ninth-grade summers, early nostalgia for something that would be soon gone.

by Jonathan Ringel (78-83, 85)

The first time I met the Root Beer Lady, I was struggling through a 1980 venture in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. It was, by far, my toughest six days during what were otherwise seven blissful summers at Nebagamon in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Three years later I saw the Root Beer Lady a second time, and by then I’d learned some particularly Nebagamon-ish lessons that have lasted a lifetime.

The Root Beer Lady was Dorothy Molter, and she was a legend in the BWCA. Canoeists on Knife Lake would be paddling through its pristine waters when they’d come upon an island cabin, surrounded by a picket fence made of broken paddles (including one from Nebagamon). Inside was a white-haired woman selling bottles of ice-cold, homemade root beer.

Born in 1907, Molter became a nurse and started living on the island to help a man run a small fishing resort in the 1930s. After he died in 1948, she lived there by herself. The federal government wanted her to move out in the 1970s, but popular support helped her win a reprieve, and she stayed on the island until she died there in 1986. By then she’d served thousands of canoeists her root beer—cooled by ice cut from the lakes during the winter.

Minnesota Public Radio and Roadside America have excellent summaries of her life. And, in fact, she’s been somewhat immortalized. It turns out that the homestead belonging to Dorothy, who has been described as the last non-indigenous resident of the BWCA, was dismantled in 1987 and transported by dogsled and snowmobile to Moose Lake. From there, it was moved to Ely, where volunteers restored two of her cabins. They now serve as the site of the Dorothy Molter Museum.

I originally encountered the Root Beer Lady after I had finished sixth grade and was on my first wilderness trip—or at least the first one that wasn’t merely a two-day excursion to a nearby lake with my cabin mates. At the start of that summer, my instinct had been to stay in camp with all of my friends. But I recall my counselors and—frankly, everyone on the staff—pushing us to get our ranks and get the heck out of town. I had always liked canoeing, and I let myself be steered into signing up for what we then called a “Sawbill”—a six-day trip to the BWCA.

I soon found myself on a trip mostly with seventh graders that I didn’t know very well, and I felt completely out of my depth among more experienced trippers. And I soon found myself getting a reputation among our crew as a complainer. I had mastered my J-stroke on a five-mile paddle through Lake Nebagamon and had built a fire at CNOC. But once I was on the trip, everything seemed much harder than I expected.

It started with being woken up at the crack of dawn for a quick breakfast and long van ride. Wearing hiking boots in the canoe, and getting them soaked as we portaged from lake to lake, was also an unpleasant surprise. So was canoeing in the rain, getting drinking water by dipping a cup in the lake, eating food that always seemed spicier than I preferred and, especially, trying to clean spaghetti carb grease off plates.

Even when we came upon the Root Beer Lady at her island oasis of civilization, I was disappointed; I liked Coke more than root beer.

One afternoon after we arrived at a campsite, the counselors, Kerry Kornfeld and Jim Cantor, explained the problem to me. Too often, they said, I waited around for someone to tell me what to do. Too often I commented on what was going on (like how annoying the mosquitoes were) instead of seeing what needed to be done around the campsite, such as putting up tents, gathering water or wood or preparing dinner. To my horror, I even earned a trip report repeating these indictments of my tripping abilities.

As I recall at how awkward I felt 35 years ago, I’m a little surprised by what happened next. A year later, I signed up for another Sawbill, and this time everything felt easier. I knew what to expect and what to do, and I started to enjoy myself. The next year I stayed eight weeks and went on a hiking trip, a cycling trip and on the Isle Royale big trip. And as a ninth grader, I went another six-day Sawbill, visiting the Root Beer Lady again. Later that summer, I went on a Quetico big trip.

I realized the significance of my tripping lesson decades later. It was summer again, but I was in the office, and one day I found myself advising one of the journalists that I managed. “Don’t just wait around at the end of the day,” I suggested, “to see what needed to be done to get our paper out before deadline. Be proactive.”

Around that same period, my wife and I were in the early months of being parents for the first time. One night as Deb attended to the baby, I got up and started to wash bottles and dishes, and I recalled where I learned this key lesson of domestic relations—at an all-boy’s camp.

That summer, I read Sally and Nardie Stein’s history of Camp. I wrote them a congratulatory note and shared my memory of that first tough Sawbill and what I learned from it. Sally responded, “We can only imagine the chagrin Jon Ringel felt when he—perhaps for the first time—did not succeed at something.” Therein lay the genius of the camping experience that had never occurred to me. It provided a place to fail—and to succeed.

And it taught me to have the courage to test out the unfamiliar. The second time that I met Dorothy Molter, I actually savored the root beer.

For two groups of alumni, the wilderness experience has been a means of maintaining friendships and celebrating the outdoors well into adulthood—padding already strong bonds with Nebaga-friends as they paddle. These are the stories of their summer traditions:

BOYS’ TRIPS

by David Eppstein (61-61, 65, 67-69, 72, 74)

My first Camp Nebagamon trip was a Swamper cabin foray to Bony Lake in 1961. The two things I remember most were catching my first sunfish and one of my cabin mates developing a bad case of poison ivy. It must have been a particularly bad year for poison ivy, because I also remember that Fred Brownstein was elected to the “Nut Club” for contracting poison ivy as a result of wiping his butt with the wrong leaves.

As a camper, I also took a couple of Sawbills to the Boundary Waters, but never any hiking trips with those crazy Danes—walking, in general, and especially having to carry a pack, was never my thing. But I loved the canoe trips. They were challenging without being overwhelming. And the experience of being out in the woods, away from it all for days at a time with a group of friends, was pure pleasure. So pleasurable, in fact, that I’ve been taking similar trips on an annual basis with a core group of Nebagamon boys for more than 20 years.

Eppie, Jimmy, Joe, and Steve on the Green River

During that time, Jimmy Lewis (63-66, 69-72), Steve Salky (64, 66-69, 71-74), my brother Joe Eppstein (65-66, 69, 71-72), his son Eitan Marder-Eppstein (99-01) and I have taken trips on 18 different whitewater rivers throughout Canada and the U.S. Like the song that Darryl Couts used to sing at the GTC, “I (we’ve) been everywhere, man, we’ve been everywhere”…from the Verde River in Arizona to the Otherside River in Saskatchewan… from the St. Croix River along the Maine/New Brunswick border to the Wallowa and Grande Ronde Rivers in Oregon.

Jimmy, Steve, Joe and I have been taking camping trips together since the early 1970’s when we were all counselors at Nebagamon. A couple times a year we would gather as a group, with respective spouses, significant others, and, eventually, children in tow at some campground, inn, or cabin(s) to spend a couple of days in the woods. But the “Boys’ Trips,” as they have come to be called did not start in earnest until 1996. That first trip was a four-day affair on the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers, during Tropical Storm Fern. I have never, before or since, been in a tent when it was raining that hard. Joe and I slept well, having remembered our CNOC instructions on how to properly pitch a tent. Jimmy and Steve, on the other hand fared less well.

When we returned to the river, it had risen eight feet overnight to flood stage. Which, of course, meant that macho Big Chiefs Joe and Steve were determined to run the huge wave train at the confluence of the two rivers. They made it through the first six-foot rooster tail, but swamped out immediately after that and spent the next 30 minutes working to get out of the current with the canoe. We picked them up about a half-mile downstream.

The next year we tried something a bit more tame by taking a five-day trip on the newly designated “Wild and Scenic” Buffalo River in Arkansas. The rapids were nothing to write home about, but the campsites along the river were terrific. In the years that followed, we went in search of the perfect combination of scenery, remoteness, and whitewater challenge—rivers such as the Green River through Desolation and Grey Canyons, the Mistassibi NE in Quebec, the Bloodvein and Pigeon Rivers in Manitoba, the Dumoine and Coulonge Rivers in Ontario, and the Clearwater and Porcupine Rivers in Saskatchewan. The sweet spot for us was to find a class III whitewater river without too many portages, requiring either a float-plane or long shuttle in, and able to be canoed on for six or seven consecutive days. The Clearwater in Saskatchewan, just over the border from Alberta, with its superb campsites and challenging rapids, was perfect. We even managed a base camp day just above a three-tiered waterfall—sweet respite from our usual 18-20 “clicks” (km) per day.

Most of the time, we had these rivers to ourselves, only occasionally passing an occupied campsite, or meeting up with another small group at the beginning or end of a portage. We were able to identify most rapids, waterfalls, and portages on the 1:50,000 scale maps we carried, and, in some cases, were lucky enough to have these supplemented by “River Guide” notes found on-line from previous paddlers. But there were definitely times when we had to decide for ourselves whether a particular stretch of rapids was runnable, and, if so, which line to follow. The latter was often the subject of intense debate—mostly between Joe and Steve (and later Eitan), as the rest of us waited for our instructions. However, the line ultimately chosen did not guarantee success, which is why gear was always stored in NRS dry bags securely lashed to the thwarts. The rapids known as “The Wall” and “The Canyon” on the Pigeon nearly did us in. And, while running the Green River in an open canoe with a support raft for gear, we executed a perfect “real-life” canoe-over-raft rescue at the bottom of a particularly hairy class IV rapid to the applause and cheers of the guided trip participants watching from shore.

Around the campfire at night, the conversation seesaws back and forth from then to now. We know each other’s stories so well that any one of us can complete the telling. And having been together through marriages, divorces, child rearing, career changes, and death gives rise to a comforting intimacy. Names fall away as we take to addressing one another as “Brother”…or in our more effusive moments “SON!” Laughter, from the loons and us, drifts out over the water.

I don’t know how much longer these trips will last. Old age seems to have a way of creeping up on us. For years, we’ve toyed with the idea of doing some really BIG water like the Nahanni in the Northwest Territories or the Moisie in Labrador and Quebec. Maybe next summer…with a guide this time.

QUETICO CONTINUES

By David Michel (75-80) and Jeff Goldenberg (75-82)

As college sophomores in the spring of 1985 we were missing each other, Camp Nebagamon, and the wilderness. We had last been camping together on our 1980 Big Trip and, through the glorified retelling of stories from Quetico, had convinced ourselves that we needed to return to the Boundary Waters, this time on our own.

That summer, David flew to MSP and climbed into the passenger seat of Jeff’s 1982 Fiat Spider. Heading north, the Fiat proved to be almost too small for our gear, a bit overmatched on the unpaved Gunflint Trail, and a magnet of derision for the denizens of the Iron Range, who yelled at us at a fuel stop to, “Get an American car!” We relied on memory and the skills learned at CNOC as we shopped for groceries and packed out. The only thing we needed from an outfitter was a canoe. We put in at Moose Lake, just as we had in 1980.

Since everything we knew about camping we learned at camp, neither of us could imagine doing anything differently. We soaped our pots, drank bug juice, swam in the nude, and never wore lifejackets.  We did splurge on a two-man A-frame tent, an improvement upon Nebagamon’ s Korean War-era “wilderness” tents that did not stay dry and had to be pitched in a thicket of trees, (and thus on their undulating roots).  We nicknamed that tent “Taj Michel,” in a nod to its luxuriousness. The rest of our equipment included ponchos, jeans, and the sleeping bags we had used since Swamper Five.

Michael Aronoff, Jeff and David on Quetico XXX.

Now, 31 consecutive summers in Quetico and the Boundary Waters later, we have incorporated more luxuries, distilled beverages and cigarillos.  Jeff’s blue sleeping bag is the only piece of equipment that has made every trip. What began as a lark became a tradition that remains unbroken. We would never think to let our jobs or families get in the way of something this good.

Over the years we have been joined by many of our friends from Camp including Michael Aronoff, Greg Averbush, Ted Isaacs, Bill Dubinsky, Bob Dubinsky, and our bothers, Chad Goldenberg and Jeff Michel. We have been fortunate to stop by Nebagamon on our way back to the Twin Cities on many of these trips. We have bumped into Big Trips twice. On both occasions they were underwhelmed by a group of middle-aged men serenading them with “Thanks for the Pines.”

We are already looking ahead to Quetico XXXII next summer. For us, our annual adventure is far more than a camping trip. Together, we are keeping the fires burning.

by Nardie & Sally Stein

To get a copy of the Steins’ book, click here.

The following, excerpted from Keep the Fires Burning: A History and Memoir of Camp Nebagamon (available on Amazon.com or at Left Bank Books in St. Louis), is a trip through trip transportation.

As a camp deeply committed to providing wilderness trips both near and far away, Camp Nebagamon was always dependent on safe and reliable vehicles. Needless to say, the definition of “safe and reliable” changed dramatically from the first days of tripping to recent years.

One of the memorable vehicles that transported campers and staff to wilderness areas for canoe trips was a customized, twenty-passenger, flat-bedded Dodge truck with wooden benches and a metal-ribbed canvas-covered top and sides for rain protection. This plus a variety of station wagons, some with wooden exterior paneling, made up the early motor pool. Several times in the 1940s, Muggs brought the big Dodge truck back to St. Louis. Sally and Ruth Lorber remember it being used to take their friends to the downtown Veiled Prophet Parade, a St. Louis tradition.

In the 1940s smaller trucks were used to transport campers and staff to the Ely, Minnesota, area for canoe trips and to nearby sites as well. In the late 1940s camp also began leasing the Lake Nebagamon school bus to haul larger groups. Trygve Brevig was a local driver for the school district, so it was convenient for camp to hire “Trix” and lease his bus over the summer. He and Harlan “Christie” Christensen of White Bear Lake, our wonderful early-year trip program director, supervised these trips and their transportation needs well into the 1960s. By the way, most of these camp vehicles were quickly named the “Vomit Comet.”

Harlan “Christie” Christensen

Camp was fortunate in having no serious accidents during the years, when great vehicular risks were taken. The only accident I recall was in the early 1970s when our fairly new Dodge crew cab truck was returning (no campers involved) from putting in a group of fifth-grade hikers and was struck by an eighty-five-year-old driving a small sedan in Poplar, Wisconsin. This version of the Vomit Comet rolled over several times and was totaled. Fortunately, our driver, Clarence “Moose” Lacina, was unhurt, but the accident made us acutely aware of the risks. We decided we would no longer use trucks, even with modified flat-bedded rear areas, for hauling campers.

This decision ushered in the era of vans. The next Vomit Comet was “Big Blue,” a Dodge fifteen-passenger van. This vehicle lasted about twelve years, and then we turned it into a maintenance vehicle, lovingly used by our caretaker staff.

There also was a steady stream of station wagons used by the motor pool in summer and by the camp directors in winter for recruiting trips. These started out being Fords, as there was a Ford agency in Lake Nebagamon owned by our neighbors and friends Art and Ernie Vennerstrom. When they gave up their agency, we started using Pontiac wagons, including the famous “Bronze Lemans” and the “Maroon Loon,” which when retired from the camp fleet, was used by Eric Kramer’s family in East Troy, Wisconsin, for many years.

Once we bought a used yellow Ford station wagon from the Vennerstroms that had been used by the local high school as a driver education vehicle. It was a great car with one exception. We quickly learned that it had a hole in the floor on the passenger side where an extra set of instructor brakes had been removed. During rainstorms, streams of water would shoot up and douse the person sitting in the passenger seat. Sally let me hear about that one!

Another chapter in our history of vehicular mishaps occurred with the purchase in the mid-1970s of a used school bus from a local friend who thought he was doing us a favor. The bus was old but usable, could haul about fifty kids, and cost only $1,500! I couldn’t pass it up, but I should have! It broke down only once the first summer, only twice the second summer, but then numerous times its third, and last, summer! Its transmission conked out near the end of the Gunflint Trail. We had it towed to Grand Marais and left it to be sold to the highest bidder, then sent three station wagons and a truck 150 miles to pick up the stranded campers and staff.

When seat belts and shoulder straps became prevalent, we put these to use, according to the American Camping Association (and our own) automotive safety standards. We posted explicit operating regulations in all camp vehicles.

In the late 1970s, as we were sending more trips to more distant parks and wilderness areas, it became more economical to rent fifteen-passenger vans than to own them. We eventually rented at least three vans per summer.

We are grateful that “Lady Luck” smiled on us in the early years and that later with the combination of capable wilderness trip director and drivers, ACA standards, and guidance from our insurance agent, alumnus Bud Herzog, our motor pool carried out its mission with diligence and an enviable safety record.

by Adam Kaplan

Since its creation, Camp Nebagamon has been on the forefront of offering boys truly unique and life-changing experiences in the wilderness, and countless alumni through the decades trace their passion for the wilderness, and for camping, to those formative experiences at Camp Nebagamon.

For years Nebagamon has provided foundational hiking and canoeing trips. There are the wonderful hiking trips that venture into the Porcupine Mountains, or those that explore the majesty of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, or amazing two-week adventures that circumnavigate the incomparable Isle Royale National Park. Then there are those unbelievable canoe trips that access Quetico Provincial Park and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, considered to be the very best canoe country on the planet. (By the way, many of you simply know these trips as Sawbills. But did you know that Sawbill is just one of the more than one thousand lakes in the BWCA that have been paddled by Camp Nebagamon campers?) For almost nine decades, our campers have hiked the same trails and paddled the same lakes as those that came before them. The trip program connects us to our history and to these truly unique places.

Our trip program has evolved over time. With an eye towards broadening the trip program, a bicycle tripping component was added that allowed the boys to explore some of the amazing roads and parks in the area. Later still, campers were offered big boat sail trip opportunities on Lake Superior. And more recently, the opportunity to take a sea kayak trip and explore the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior has been added to the menu.

Now, one might think that will all of these options, we would stand pat and be satisfied with these myriad excellent choices. But that is not how things work at Nebagamon; we are always looking to improve. This has never been more true than in the past few years of our tripping program. In our constant quest to offer the boys as many special tripping opportunities as possible, we have added several new adventures to the tripping docket. Like any new program at Nebagamon, these programs were thought through carefully to make sure they made sense with our program and who we are as an institution.

So….when we built our climbing wall in 2009, we did it with great excitement, knowing that there are some truly spectacular climbing venues along the North Shore of Lake Superior. The plan was for us to develop a cadre of competent climbers for the first few summers and then begin to offer the boys the chance to challenge themselves on the sheer rock walls that tower 200 feet above the austere beauty of Gitche Gumee. These climbing trips began two summers ago and are, needless to say, incredibly popular.

Likewise, when we created three miles of mountain biking trails through camp and replaced all of our road bikes with mountain bikes, we did this looking ahead to the time when our boys would be able to get out and experience some of the finest mountain biking trails in the Midwest. For the past three summers our boys have been testing their peddling prowess in the Chequamegon National Forest, known as the Singletrack Capital of the Midwest. On these three day trips, the boys set up a base camp and then explore the more than 300 miles of trail in the area.

For many years our 9th grade campers have been spending most of the last two weeks of their camper careers paddling around Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. Unlike the days of yore in which there was only a single Quetico trip for seven lucky boys, these days, virtually every 9th grade camper heads north for the big adventure. In fact, this past summer we had five separate Quetico Big Trips. In addition, last year, we upped the ante and offered the boys an even BIGGER trip—the Long Trip. We created a three-week excursion that allowed the campers to explore Quetico for two weeks and then finish with a week-long Grand Portage adventure. The Grand Portage follows the trail of the Voyageurs who traveled with their bounty from the Boundary Waters into Lake Superior. It tracks the beautiful Pigeon River and eventually culminates with a nearly nine-mile portage into Lake Superior. (I know….nine miles with a canoe on your back??!!! By choice?!?! Who says kids today are soft?! Nebagamon kids aren’t!) What better way to wrap up a Camp Nebagamon tripping career than with a paddle and hike from the Boundary Waters into Lake Superior? We expect the Long Trip to become a mainstay for the hearty tripping corps of Camp Nebagamon on into the future.

If Camp Nebagamon is known for any one thing in the camping world (besides the 10,000 other things that make us the best camp on the planet!) it is our wilderness tripping program. We are proud of what the program started out as, what it has become, and will continue to evolve into. Keep on trippin’!!

1940s—1960s

Jim Klein (Toledo, OH/Charleston, SC), who was a camper in counselor Nardie Stein’s Swamper 1 cabin in 1955, spent last spring at the East China University of Political Science in Shanghai, where he taught a six-week course on the U.S. judicial process and civil procedure. A distinguished visiting professor in Charleston since 2010, he had been picked by the Chinese university as a Fulbright specialist… Ken Wurzburg (Memphis) serves on the steering committee of the Memphis Jewish Home, a residential and rehab facility… John Kander was interviewed at length by the Cleveland Plain Dealer and was the subject of a one-hour PBS special produced by HMS Media, First You Dream: The Music of Kander & Ebb. The film, which features 14 songs performed by leading Broadway stars, was produced for stage and television by Scott Silberstein and directed by Matt Hoffman. According to the press release, “Co-founders Hoffman and Silberstein have been close friends since meeting as teens at Camp Nebagamon, located in the north woods of Wisconsin, where Kander himself was a counselor many years before. They were introduced by the camp director, and Kander has been mentoring the HMS founders ever since.” Just before airtime, the person of honor commented, “If this isn’t a banner night for Camp Nebagamon, I don’t know what is!”… Mike Eastman (St. Louis) completed a series of great photos of Forest Park in St. Louis in conjunction with the launch of its major fund raising effort… Frank Sachs (Minneapolis) appeared in a CNN special last January called “The Person Who Changed My life”—about weekend anchor Poppy Harlow and her father. Frank’s role as Blake School’s guidance counselor is highlighted at the 5:30 mark.

1970s

Bob Zafft (St. Louis) has joined Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale as an international law attorney… Steve
Gallant (St. Louis) is an executive vice president and general council with Maritz Holdings Inc… Joe Shacter (Chicago) is the senior manager for state corridors for Amtrak… Steve Kaufmann (Denver/Washington, D.C.) practices law with Morrison & Foerster… Rob Kaufmann (Denver) is a litigator with Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck… John Kalishman (St. Louis) serves on the boards of the Jewish Community Relations Council and the John Burroughs School… Mark Witcoff (St. Louis/Los Angeles) tied the knot, marrying Laura Scherck Witcoff… Craig Garfinkle (Glencoe, IL/Los Angeles) was recently the subject of an interview conducted for Video Game Music Online. The introduction stated, “Whether trailers for Star Trek, sequences for WWF, or shows for top comedians, the composer’s music has been adapted for all sorts of purposes. However, he is best known to score listeners for his extensive works in the fantasy realm…” You can read the entire Q&A here… Kasper Rorsted (Arhus, Denmark/Düsseldorf, Germany) has left his position as CEO of Henkel AG, a German maker of cleaning products, to become CEO of Adidas, as touted in this article in the Wall Street Journal… Danny Meyer (St. Louis/New York City) topped The Power List 2016, a ranking by the restaurant news of the most powerful people in foodservice. The January article can be found here… Adam Bezark (Highland Park, IL/Los Angeles), owner and creative director of The Bezark Co., was the focus of a feature article in The Orange County Register last January: EX-DISNEY IMAGINEERS ARE NOW IMAGINEERING FOR OTHERS. It began, “What do Disney Imagineers do when there is no Disney theme park to create? They form their own companies to create theme parks for others around the world.” Read the rest of the story here.

1980s

Jon Star (Columbus, GA/Arlington, MA) is the Nancy Pforzheimer Aronson Associate Professor in Human Development and Education at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education… Alan Halpern (Tulsa/Stamford, CT) and wife Julie Milsten Halpern have each recently transitioned into new jobs. Julie has joined Starwood Hotels and Resorts as the director of internal communications, while Alan is the new vice president of community engagement for the Jewish Reconstructionist Communities, headquartered in Philadelphia… Thomas Jorgensen (Nairobi/Copenhagen) works with Ferring Pharmaceuticals doing research with fertility drugs, while brother Peter Jorgensen (Nairobi/Copenhagen) is in the logistics research department of the Danfoss Group… In November, Andy Cohen (St. Louis/New York City 78-83) read excerpts from some of the hilarious letters home from camp that his mother had saved all these years—while sitting next to Stephen Colbert as a guest on “The Late Show.” He mentioned that they were from his years at “Camp Nebagamon in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin.” Euan Kerr (Edinburgh, Scotland/St. Paul) traveled with the Minnesota Orchestra on its historic trip to Havana, Cuba, in May, covering the story for Minnesota Public Radio News and NPR. You can listen to his story for Weekend Edition here.

1990s

Dan Scharff (St. Louis) is a wealth management advisor with Northwestern Mutual… After serving for three years as the director of scouting for his hometown St. Louis Cardinals, Dan Kantrovitz (St. Louis) moved to California’s Bay Area to serve as assistant general manager of the Oakland A’s, serving alongside general manager Billy Beane. Dan served as Oakland’s director of international scouting from 2009-11… Danny Cohen (D.C./Los Angeles) is the new District E representative on the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council in Los Angeles… Jeremy Feiwell (Chicago), who serves as principal of the Lazaro Cardenas Elementary School, was quoted throughout a Chicago Sun-Times front-page story last December about how nearly half of the school’s students can do math at a pace that will get them into college, “a startling success for a school serving low-income children that blew away district and state averages.” The story explained, “Feiwell says his teachers decided as a team what and how they would teach new common core state standards. Cardenas doesn’t use a set math curriculum. Three years ago he asked teachers to look at each of those standards and map out how they’d teach them drawing from multiple sources. Then he got them substitutes so they could plan. They owned the process, he said, now in its second year of implementation.”

2000s

Danny Wasserman (Englewood, CO/Seattle) is Employer Development Manager for Koru, Inc., which partners with high-growth companies and top colleges across the country to solve the problem of unemployed and underemployed recent college graduates… Noah Saag (Louisville/Baltimore) was named director of operations for women’s basketball at Loyola University in Maryland… Jacob Keyes (Duluth) reached the summit of Denali as an assistant guide on a trip for the Alaska Mountaineering School.

OUR PRODUCTIVE ALUMNI

We congratulate the following alumni on these new additions to their family (and the camp family):

Jeana and Brad Foxman (Dallas, 95-98, 01-05) – Adele

Andrea and Brian Kramer (East Troy/Chicago 88-93, 95-00) — Sydney

Karen Lombardi Bernstein and Todd Bernstein (Memphis/San Francisco’85-90, 92-94) — Andrew

Marissa and Kevin Cole (Cleveland/Boston 86-92, 94-95) – Olivia

Lauren Frank and Adam Frapart (NYC, 94-00) — Cameron

Emily Farris and Kyle Hopkins (Kansas City 02-06, 12) – Theodore

WE ARE SAD TO REPORT these deaths in the camp family:

Leo Drey (St. Louis 33)

Richard Rosenthal (St. Louis 34-39)

Bob Friedman (St. Louis 36-40, 50)

John Saltzstein (Chicago 45-46)

Ed Saltzstein (Milwaukee/Santa Fe 45-46, 49-51, 53-55, 77-79, 91, 96-98, 01)

Albert Gordon (Columbia, TN/Isle au Haut, ME 54-59)

Fred Mindel (Toledo/New York City 55-62)

Bill Laytin (Fort Smith, AR/ Northbrook, IL) 57-65

Peder Kolind (Aarhus, Denmark /Nicaragua 64-68)

Ebbe Anderson (Naskov, Demark 65)

Will Fisher (Minneapolis, 88-89)

Jay Hoffman (Minnetonka, MN, 57-62, 69) noticed the photo of the Rec Hall from 1959 in the previous issue of “The Keylog” and wrote that it “brought back a lot of memories of CN for me. “I was a camper from 1957-1962, and Bill Tucker was my counselor for my first four years…S-2, L-1, L-6, Axemen 4. The picture contained others of my camping days. Muggs, Nardie, and “Hi-Pockets” Al Goldman, who lead many Good Time Charlies. These alumni newsletters are great. Keep the Fires Burning.”

Sally Stein sent an obituary for Leo Drey (St. Louis, 33), who passed away in May at age 98 and whom she described as “an incredible, interesting, one-of-a-kind man.” Leo, who found a way to accrue wealth by purchasing forestland and preserving it for selective harvest, aimed for a richness of spirit. In 2001, he told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “It’s a way that is not only economically beneficial, but the forest remains aesthetically pleasing, and people can still use it for hiking, camping and other recreation.” He was the kind of fellow who offered to lease 44 acres of Ozark Woodland to his old school, John Burroughs School, for an annual fee of $1 (it has been dubbed the Drey Land) and whose answering machine announced, “I’m out planting a forest. Please leave your name and number, and I’ll try to get back to you before it matures.”

Here is how his obituary began: “For decades, city boy Leo Drey drove across dusty Ozark roads, introducing himself to farmers and offering to buy their timberland. Much of that land was nearly worthless from years of neglect by lumber companies. But Drey had a grand plan to make money from the wrecked forests. He would restore them, selectively harvest and sell some timber while preserving the rest for nature lovers, recreation and gradual harvesting later. To the surprise of many, Drey’s pioneering ideas worked. His forests thrived and he became a multimillionaire. His buying trips paid off and eventually he became Missouri’s largest private landowner. Then he gave it all away—to a foundation he set up to preserve the land.”

In the days following the death of his brother, Peder, Lars Kolind (Aarhus, Denmark/Copenhagen, 67-70) described his older sibling as a successful businessman and philanthropist who “never wanted recognition or media coverage, but he deserves to be remembered.” Lars, too, is active in business and philanthropy, writing, “I own about ten companies in different fields that I love to work with. I spend about one third of my time in China helping CEOs understand how they can apply Western management practices, I continue to write and to lecture, and I spend about 20% of my time raising money for World Scouting. Vibeke and I still run the Løndal Estate although we have in fact moved to Copenhagen. Our four children are all doing well, so we have no complaints.” He also could have mentioned that he has authored several books and has been involved in forming organizations in Denmark ranging from the National Competency Council to the National Network for Social Cohesion to the National Council for Children and Culture.

John Nevins (Oak Park, IL/Pensacola, FL, 00-06, 08-12, 14) wrote with an update about his military
training. “Right now I’m living in the Florida panhandle, Pensacola to be specific. I’m still a Marine Corps 2nd Lieutenant (I get promoted in January), and I am stationed up at Naval Air Station Whiting Field for what is called primary flight training. Primary flight training is what all Student Naval Aviators need to pass in order to then specialize into jet/rotary/maritime types of aircraft. Right now I am in the contact phase of training, which means that I am working on learning how to do different kinds of landings and maneuvers, like recovering from stalls or spins. I spend most of my day studying and the other part flying the T-6B, which is a beautiful 1150 shaft horsepower trainer aircraft used by, among others, Israel. We do most of our stuff at around 200-240 knots, your average Cessna 2-seater normally maxes out around 100kts for reference. I am hoping to end up in the helicopter pipeline when I graduate Primary training around January, to eventually fly the AH-1Z which is known as the cobra. On the leisure front, I’m actually starting to play ice hockey again, as sunny, muggy, miserably hot Pensacola actually has a sizable men’s league.”

Louisville attorney Fred Joseph (Louisville, 56-63, 65-66) sent a note to Nardie and Sally Stein that included an update on his various interests beyond his role as counsel for Stiltes & Harbison, PLLC: “I’m spending more and more time in my wood shop making furniture and picture frames.  I’m also finding some new on line sources I can use for my family history project (currently approaching 950 pages) and am considering writing a book on my father and grandfather’s architectural firm. I’m also heavily involved in a group which is working on the development of a Jewish archives in Louisville. For someone who avoided history classes all through high school and college, this is quite a change.”

The Camp Nebagamon Charities web site www.cncharities.org is dedicated to both the Camp Nebagamon Scholarship Fund (CNSF) and Camperships For Nebagamon (CFN). Learn about different donation options, read about each charity, and more.

Recent Donors to the Camp Nebagamon Scholarship Fund

Thanks to the generosity of Nebagamon alumni and friends, the Camp Nebagamon Scholarship Fund supports transformative camp experiences for youth who experience poverty and/or intellectual and physical disabilities. Recipient camps, located near communities where Nebagamon campers live, are a home-away-from-home where youth in difficult circumstances are among peers and powerful role models for success.

Check out (and like!) our Facebook page for a first-hand glimpse of photos and insights that illustrate the amazing impact the CN Scholarship Fund is having on kids’ lives.

Founded in 1947 by Muggs and Janet Lorber and administered for 50+ years by Nardie and Sally Lorber Stein, the CN Scholarship Fund provides tuition scholarships at nonprofit camps that cultivate skills and values needed for success. Thanks to generous donations to the Camp Nebagamon Scholarship Fund, 175 kids attended camp in the summer of 2015.

The CN Scholarship Fund gratefully acknowledges donations from April 1, 2015 – March 31, 2016:

Rick and Kathy Abeles
Ann Abrams
Susan Anchondo
John Arenberg
Paul Arenberg
Lisa and David Aronson
Marian and Art Auer
Joe Badt
Elizabeth and Andrew Baer
Camilla and Frank Baer
Kathy Hogan Barnett and Stuart Barnett
Linda and Bob Barrows
Donna Barrows
Charlie Barrows
Melanie and Laurance Baschkin
Richard Baum
June and Jim Baumoel
Leo Bearman
Herb Behrstock
Allen Bennett
Rita Bernstein
Linda Tate and Bob Best
Cynthia Bilbe
Peter Bloch
Lisa and Paul Blumberg
Susan and Tony Blumberg
Christopher Cooney and Jim Blumenfeld
Lori and Jeff Blumenthal
Ronald Borod
Jennifer Bowen
Elizabeth and John Breyer Jr.
Dale Brodsky
LuAnn and Larry Brody
Barbara and Jim Bronner
Spencer Brown
Charles Calhoon
Mark Caro
Marcia and Mark Cherniack
Ellen and Scott Chukerman
Alfred Cohen
Stephanie Tomasky and Mitch Cohen
Andrew Cohen
Danny Cohen
Carol Bayersdorfer Cohen and Ed Cohen
Patricia and Richard Cohn
Bonnie and Mike Cole
Cole-Belin Education Foundation
Suzi and Jon Colman
Louis Coppersmith
Suzy and Jim Cornbleet
Eric Corndorf
Hank Crane
Jennifer Daskal
Licia Hahn and Gene Dattel
Jerry Dattel
Jane Davis
Michelle and Stan DeGroote
Leann and Bill Dexter
Marilyn and Lou Diamond
Jessie Stein Diamond and Scott Diamond
Jed Dreifus
Jennifer Sosensky and David Dreifus
Jon Dreifus
Luise and Ed Drolson
Cynthia Gamholtz and William Eastman
Kelli Cohen Fein and Marty Fein
Chris Taylor and Jim Feldman
Jill and Ron Fisher
Mary and Richard Fisher
Marjorie and Terry Franc
Janet and Merrill Freed
Laura and Bill Freeman
Michael Freeman
Andrew and Jennifer Friedman
Matt and Jodi Friedman
Julie and Bud Friedman
Bill Friedman
Rebecca Roin and Adam Garchik
Judith Garfinkel
Betsy and Spencer Garland
Alan Geismer
Aliza and Jim Gerstein
Richard Gitt
Sandy and Bill Glassman
Susan and Bob Glasspiegel
Gail and Marcus Goldberg
Susan and Bill Goldenberg
Karen Yoshar and Jeff Goldenberg
Elaine and Mike Goldman
Joanie and Mark Goldstein
Lisa and Jonathan Goodman
Martha and Jerrold Graber
Meg and James Grant
Martha and Jim Gray
Douglas Greene
Rachel and Ralph Greil
Liz Lewis and Jim Guest
Debbie and Paul Guggenheim
Bobbie and Mark Gutman
Julie and Alan Halpern
Natalie and Neil Handelman
Howard Handler
Howard Handler
Pat and Michael Harris
John Hart
Victoria Ann Sher and John Hecht
Lawrence Held
Nancy Hensel
Joel Hensel
Jaye and Bill Hensel
Janie and Tom Herman
Barbara and Dan Herz
Joe Herz
Hazel and Bud Herzog
Amy and Brian Herzog
Luke Herzog
Cathy and Rick Hirschmann
Cathy Ann Kaufman Iger and Mark Iger
Helaine and Warner Isaacs
Ted Jadwin
Joe Jankowsky
Joseph Family Charitable Trust
Ed Juda
Caryn and Harlan Kahn
Kahn-Abeles Foundation
Amy and Jim Kalishman
Nancy Kalishman
Diane and John Kalishman
John Kander
Ken Kanter
Nathalie Feldman and Andy Kaplan
Blair Kaplan
Stephanie Hanson and Adam Kaplan
Nancy Kassel
Jennifer Gilbert-Kaufmann and Robert Kaufmann
Sarah Kerr
Jane Stein Kerr and Euan Kerr
Wendy Bloom and Arthur Kessler
Barbara and Dennis Kessler
Carol Kiersky
Joe Kirkish
Yael and Stephen Klein
Heide and Jim Klein
Tom Kolbrener
Stephanie and Rick Koretz
Claudia Simons and Alan Korn
Sara Jill Rubel and Eric Kramer
Andrea and Brian Kramer
Danielle Brinker and John Kramer
Pam and Mark Kuby
Rose Lenehan
Cissy and Bob Lenobel
Jeffrey Levinson
Dan Levis
Judith Axelrod and Kenneth Lewis
Steve Loeb
Tom Loeb
Linda and Eric Lucy
Ann Lux
Carol Kaplan and Michael Lyss
Jacqueline Mack
Laura and Ken Mack
Audrey Mann
Jill and Andrew Marcus
Nancy Marcus
Nancy Brown and Andrew May
Lynn and Jack May
Jean and Stan Meadows
Mary Kate and Jeff Mellow
Joe Mendelsohn
Susan and Bob Mendelsohn
Julia Gittleman and Tom Mendelsohn
David Michel
Jean Middleton
Leslie and Stuart Milsten
Nancy and Dick Milsten
Jane and Bob Milsten
Paula and Malcolm Milsten
Modestus Bauer Foundation
Erika and John Montag
Ursela Bendixrn and Bob Moog
Alva Moog, JR
Leah and James Myers
Nancy and Emil Nathan, III
Mary and Bob Nefsky
Lee Anne Hartley and Tom Nevers
Deborah and Robert Oppenheimer
Brenda and Sandy Passer
Laurie and Todd Platt
Deborah Snyder and Jim Platt
Don Price
Henry Pulitzer
Nancy and Leigh Quinn
Andrea L’Tainen and Joshua Rabinowitz
Roselind and Sheldon Rabinowitz
Jennifer and Jay Riven
Hana Ruzicka Rivkin and Steven Rivkin
Michele and Larry Rivkin
Don Robertson
Cindy and Jon Rogen
Marya and Tony Rose
Sheri and Jim Rosen
Ruth Rosen
Sarah Stern and Mark Rosenblatt
Judd Rosenblatt
Keri Rosenbloom
Carol and Roger Rosenthal
Carol Murphy and Bill Rosenthal
Lauren Katz and Joel Rubenstein
Chris and Frank Sachs
Carin and Mark Sage
Gail Ifshin and Steven Salky
Mike Samuels
Jane and Rein Saral
Tiffany and James Scharff
Laury and Lewis Scharff
Martha and Lee Schimberg
Shelley Cohn and Bennett Schmidt & Clay
Pat and Fred Schonwald, JR.
Andrew and Bud Schram
Lynn and Max Schrayer
Carol and Jeff Schulman
Andrew Schwarz
Monique and Robert Schweich
Lee and Mark Scissors
Jennifer and Irl Scissors and Family
Arlene Semel
Colleen Carroll and Mitch Semel
Margeaux Settineri
Sara and Joe Shacter
Jodi and Tom Shapira
Susie Ansehl and Rand Shapiro
Judy and Allan Sher
Judy Zins and Joseph Shlaferman
Jerry Shroder
Robert Silverman
Abby Spector and Gerald Skillings
Linda and Ron Sklar
Sue and Bob Smith
Julie and Rick Smith
Michael Sobel
Guela and Josh Solomon
Solon E. Summerfield Foundation
Estelle and Morton Sosland
Nancy Chasen and Don Spero
Mindy and Frank Star
Irene and Norton Starr
Sally and Nardie Stein
Elena Stein
Noah Stein
Perrin and Ted Stein
Mary Elizabeth Calhoon and David Stern
Ann and Will Stern
Alexandra Ackerman and David Stern
Bob and Ellen Stern
Amanda Whalen and Jim Stewart
Emily Glasser and Bill Susman
Carolyn and Brian Swett
Lynne Tarnopol
Tawani Foundation
The Fezzik Foundation, Inc.
The Levitt Foundation
The Ral Revocable Trust
The Throop Family
Ginny and Dick Thornburgh
Jo Anne and Alan Travis
Madge and Tom Treeger
Anita Tyler
Susan and Ben Uchitelle
Donald Ullmann
Vicki Woolf and Timothy Van Hook
Emily Brosius and Scott Ventrudo
Judy and Roger Wallenstein
Esther Starrels and John Wasserman
Waterway Gas & Wash Company
Michelle and David Weber
Susan and David Weber
Harriet and Paul Weinberg
Michael Weinberg (III)
Michael Weinberg, JR
Cathy and Craig Weiss
Phyllis and Bruce Willett
Stephanie and Robert Wineman
Deborah and Adam Winick
Nicole and James Woldenberg
Michael Woldenberg
David Zalk
Judy and Lon Zimmerman
John Zuraw

Recent Donors to Camperships for Nebagamon

Camperships for Nebagamon (CFN) was established in 1995 to enable children who would not otherwise have the opportunity to have a camping experience. Over the years, the CFN endowment fund has provided camperships for boys to attend Nebagamon and girls to attend Camp WeHaKee. Campers receiving camperships help to diversify their camp communities by virtue of their racial, ethnic, religious and socioeconomic status. In addition, CFN continues the tradition of support to sons and grandsons of Nebagamon alumni who demonstrate financial need.

CFN wishes to thank the following individuals who generously made donations to CFN from April 1, 2015 – March 31, 2016:

Amy Levin and Keith Abeles
Rick and Kathy Abeles
Carol and David Adelson
Mary Allen
Tina and Steve Apter
Jeanne and Michael Aronoff
Associated Bank
Marian and Art Auer
Dana and Greg Averbuch
Joe Badt
Elizabeth and Andrew Baer
Karen and David Balser
John Barnerd
Donna Barrows
Linda and Bob Barrows
Charlie Barrows
Nancy Lipsitz and Aden Barton
June and Jim Baumoel
BDO
Leo Bearman
Lynn, Bob and Robert Behrendt
Herb Behrstock
Rick Bendix JR
Allen Bennett
Joan and Bert Berkley
Amy and Matt Berler
Simon Blattner
Alison Kamine and Bob Bloom
Gregory Blum
Lisa and Paul Blumberg
Linda and David Blumberg
Susan and Tony Blumberg
Christopher Cooney and Jim Blumenfeld
Andrew Blumenfeld
BMO Harris Bank
Joe Borinstein
Rod Borwick
Julie and Adam Braude
Tracy and Martin Bregman
Elizabeth and John Breyer Jr.
Lisa and Rich Broder
Dale Brodsky
Linda and Don Brown
Spencer Brown
Bunn-O-Matic Corporation
Jean and Mark Burnstine
Susan and Jim Cantor
Mark Caro
Ellen and Scott Chukerman
Sherman Cohen
Ralph Cohen
Stephanie Tomasky and Mitch Cohen
Andrew Cohen
Carol Bayersdorfer and Ed Cohen
Patricia and Richard Cohn
Bonnie and Mike Cole
Kevin Cole
Cole-Belin Education Foundation
Kay and Tony Coletta
Michael Coletta
Ellen Nissenbaum and Jeff Colman
Suzi and Jon Colman
Jennifer Daskal
Becky and Raven Deerwater
Michelle and Stan DeGroote
Allan Deguzman
Dell Valley Community Foundation
Barry and Lynn Deutsch
Leann and Bill Dexter
Jessie Stein Diamond and Scott Diamond
Anthony and Dianne Dibenedetto
James Dobravec
Jennifer Sosensky and David Dreifus
Eugene Dreyer
Nicole and James Druckman
Elizabeth Moss and Bill Dubinsky
Barry Dunne
Jeannette McNeil and Peter Fechheimer
Kelli Cohen and Marty Fein
Christine Taylor and Jim Feldman
Gayle Weiswasser and Dan Feldman
Gina and Ben Firestone
First Midwest Bank
Mary and Richard Fisher
Follett School Solutions, Inc.
Julie and Dan Frank
Laura and Bill Freeman
Barbara and Richard Fried
Bill Friedman
William Friedman
Julie and Bud Friedman
Matt and Jodi Friedman
Lisa and Steve Friedman
Andrew and Jennifer Friedman
Jane and Sam Friedman
Andrew and Jennifer Friedman
Osnat and Greg Gafni-Pappas
Rebecca Roin and Adam Garchik
Marlene and Laren Garfield
Betsy and Spencer Garland
Alan Geismer
Tom Gerson
Richard Gitt
Sandy and Bill Glassman
Susan and Bob Glasspiegel
Susan and Bill Goldenberg
Stephen Goldfarb
Melissa and Jason Goldman
Jonathan Goldstein
Martha and Jerrold Graber
Marty Gradman
Janice Anderson and Tom Gram
Heidi Gray
Martha and Jim Gray
Josh Gray
Douglas Greene
Rachel and Ralph Greil
Kathy and Frank Grossman
Debbie and Paul Guggenheim
Cheryl and Bill Guthman
Judith and Jon Harris
Mary Lou and Edward Harrison
John Hart
Mike Heldman
Maime Hensel
Jaye and Bill Hensel
Barbara and Dan Herz
Joe Herz
Hazel and Bud Herzog
Luke Herzog
Lee Hess
Maxine and Louis Heyman
Gene Hill
Carol and Richard Hillsberg
Frank Hirsch
Marian and Maurice Hirsch
Marilyn and Joe Hirschhorn
Cynthia and Charles Hirschhorn
Jason Hirschhorn
Sara and Mitch Hoffman
Hallie and Douglas Hohner
Gay and Gary Hohner
Anne Ledell-Hong and Nathaniel Hong
Nancy Mendelsohn and Jay Horvath
Jim Horwich
Clare Saulnier and Stephen Howard, M. D.
Cathy Kaufman and Mark Iger
Dina and Steve Isaacs
Kathy and Mike Jay
Joseph Family Charitable Trust
Ed Juda
Caryn and Harlan Kahn
Bob Kahn
Diane and John Kalishman
John Kander
Ken Kanter
Suzanne, Daniel & Noah Kanter
Cheryl Bondy and Mark Kaplan
Joshua Avigad and Laura Kaplan
Bob Kaplan
Nathalie Feldman and Andy Kaplan
Stephanie and Adam Kaplan
Benjamin Katz
Jennifer Gilbert and Robert Kaufmann
Irene and Dmitri Kaznachey
Jane Stein and Euan Kerr
Sarah Kerr
Barbara and Dennis Kessler
Sharapat and Eric Kessler
Micki Klearman
Jeff Kohn
Bud Kolbrener II
Stephanie and Rick Koretz
Stu Kornfeld
Thanet and Nicholas Kramer
Sara Jill Rubel and Eric Kramer
Danielle Brinker and John Kramer
Roberta De Araujo and Ron Kreisman
Emily and Michael Laskin
Joanna and Andrew Laytin
Kerrie Maloney and Dan Laytin
Nancy Laytin
Joanne Lelewer Harpel
Rose Lenehan
Cissy and Bob Lenobel
Suzanne and Jeff Levi
Jill and John Levi
Dan Levis
Miriam and Benjamin Lichstein
Rebecca and Harold Lieberman
Randi Shafton and Drew Lieberman
Maggie Beal and Jeff Loeb
Elizabeth Loeb
Anne Lokken
Ann Lux
Andy Mack
Laura and Ken Mack
Magdovitz Family Foundation
Joyce and Fred Marcus
Jill and Andrew Marcus
Joan Richman and David Margolin
Dru Margolin
Julie and Steve Mathes
Peggy Warner and Robert Matz
Brian May
Jean and Stan Meadows
Mary Kate and Jeff Mellow
Marji and Don Mendelsohn
Julia Gittleman and Tom Mendelsohn
Jim Mendelsohn
Matthew Mendelsohn
Lois and Bo Meyer
Julie Stevenson and Tom Meyer
Audrey and Danny Meyer
Nancy and Marc Meyer and Marc Weiss
Barbara Miller
Andrea Miracle Miracle
Modestus Bauer Foundation
Ann and Gary Mollengarden
Ursela Bendixen and Bob Moog
Alva Moog , JR
Betsy Murray
Kathe and Jim Myer
Janet and Fred Nachman
Pamela Narins
Andrea and Randy Needlman
Mary and Bob Nefsky
Peggy and Andy Newman
John Nickoll
James O’Donnell
Kathy and Stephen Olsen
Deborah and Robert Oppenheimer
Jenny Rosene and Kaine Osburn
Martha Ostrum
Becky and Don Parmelee
Brenda and Sandy Passer
Barbara Perlman
Betty and Tom Philipsborn
Laurie and Todd Platt
Deborah Snyder and Jim Platt
Renee and Joel Posener
Don Price
Jennifer Pritzker, IL ARNG (Ret)
Marcia Saplan and Michael Privitera
Judy and Paul Putzel
Andrea L’Tainen and Joshua Rabinowitz
Michael Raleigh
Steve Reichert
Ms. Reiner Reiner
Christopher Renis
Michele and Larry Rivkin
Cindy and Jon Rogen
Cynthia and Andy Rolfe
Alyne and Jim Rolfe
Ruth Rosen
Sheri and Jim Rosen
Emily and Bob Rosenberg
Ricki and Joe Rosenberg Rosenberg
Kathy and Skip Rosenblatt
Keri Rosenbloom
Susan and Joseph Rosenbloom, III
Carol and Roger Rosenthal
Carol Murphy and Bill Rosenthal
Lauren Katz and Joel Rubenstein
Teri and Roger Rudich
Nathalie and Russell Russell
Patricia Russell
Noah Saag
Scott Sachnoff
Chris and Frank Sachs
Stephen Sachs
Jared Saef
Gail Ifshin and Steven Salky
Erin and Seth Salomon
Dawn and Dan Saltzstein
Kim and Tom Saltzstein
Bud Samuels
Ruth Sang
Kit and Ray Sawyer
John Sawyer
Ron and Darcy Scharff
Laury and Lewis Scharff
Marc Schechter
Sue Ann and Bob Schiff
Barbara and Bruce Schimberg
Carla and Scott Schneider
Marily and Spike Schonthal, Jr
Andrew and Bud Schram
Lynn and Max Schrayer
Debbie and Andrew Schwartz
Monique and Robert Schweich
Jennifer and Irl Scissors and Family
Joanne Grossman and John Seesel
Bud and Sue Selig
Colleen Carroll and Mitch Semel
Ben Senturia
Amar Shah
Susie Ansehl and Rand Shapiro
Judy and Allan Sher
Stephen Sherman
Jenny and Walter Shifrin
Ashley and Mike Sholiton
Jerry Shroder
Patti and Irwin Silverman
Robert Silverman
David Singer
Stephanie and Joel Sklar
Linda and Ron Sklar
Patti and Dan Slosburg
Lucy and Eric Slosser
Sue and Bob Smith
Guela and Josh Solomon
Ann and Michael Solomon
Nancy Chasen and Don Spero
Arlene and Richard Steele
Sally and Nardie Stein
Elena Stein
Perrin and Ted Stein
Karin Susens and John Stephenson
Alexandra Ackerman and David Stern
Deborah and William Strull
Rebecca and Philip Susser
Peter R. Kagan and Susannah A. Smetana
The Private Bank
Jill and Tim Thompson
Wilma Tisch
Ann and Andy Tisch
Merryl and Jim Tisch
Peggi and Michael Touff
Madge and Tom Treeger
Jeff Trenton
Heidi and Gary Tyson
Loris and Robert Ungar
Vicki Woolf and Timothy Van Hook
Emily Brosius and Scott Ventrudo
Judy and Roger Wallenstein
Esther Starrels and John Wasserman
Waterway Gas & Wash Company
Robert Wayne
Harriet and Paul Weinberg
Tom Weinberg
Michael Weinberg (III)
Michael Weinberg, JR
Cathy and Craig Weiss
Nancy Werthan
Betty and Bernard Werthan
Suzanne Whiting
Phyllis and Bruce Willett
Henry Wineman
Wintrust Bank
Michael Woldenberg
Stephen Woldenberg
Nancy and James Wolf
Joanne and Trip Wolf
Shelby Yastrow
Carol and Michael Yunker
Craig Zimmerman
Vicky and James Zimmerman
Douglas Zimmerman
Krista and Joseph Zito