Camp and the alumni community wouldn’t be what they are without the directors who have poured so much of themselves into this place over the years. We know our alumni are interested in hearing about what they’re up to now!
By Sally Lorber Stein
As you climb a mountain and look behind yourself, the view gets longer and longer as you ascend. Likewise, as I have climbed by years, now at age 92, I have a more expansive view of conversations, incidents, places, and events that happened long ago. My perspective further expands as many Nebagamon alumni, campers and staff reach out to me and express gratitude for what camp has meant to them in their lives. Sometimes they describe mid-course corrections of their own life’s path and share how their camp years influenced these decisions. What they share further refreshes and expands my memory.
Sometimes these are bittersweet moments when I miss Nardie, who died in 2022: he would have deeply appreciated these updates. There were a few alumni who were aware he was fading fast, and who called or wrote to deliver words of affirmation that were deeply meaningful to him in his final days.
Fortunately, I also have a closer View from Here when I am at our family home down the street from camp’s back gate. During the summer, I often hear campers’ happy voices from the waterfront. When on our dock, I feast my eyes with views of sailboats, canoes, kayaks, and paddleboards being supervised by staff in nearby boats. Occasionally, I hear shrieks from a kid on the fishing dock who caught a big (or little) fish. Also, I see today’s Cruiser Day Swampers (tomorrow’s Lumberjacks) walking to the village for a long-anticipated ice cream treat.
My View From Here is one of joy, contentment, and gratitude to current dedicated camp administrators and staff and to all of those who carried the torch after Nardie and I retired. Each of those directors preserved and improved our collective views of Camp Nebagamon and for that, I am deeply grateful.
The View From Here
By Roger and Judy Wallenstein
Filling out a form asking for one’s employment status has been an interesting exercise for us the past 21 years. We haven’t had an employer, but writing “retired” on that dotted line is not who we are. The year-round super-charged activity of being the directors of Camp Nebagamon for 15 years, an experience unmatched by anything in our wildest dreams, may have exited our lives, but “retired?” Well, not so much.
Soon after leaving camp, we found a second home in the Coachella Valley of California about 20 miles east of Palm Springs in Indio to which we moved fulltime in the fall of 2024. We always will consider ourselves Chicagoans, but we’ve made friends through golfing, bicycling (we’re done with that now), hiking the desert mountains while living in a 55-and-over community.
Chet and Billy and their spouses Chris and Nikki are raising families in Issaquah, WA and Deerfield, IL, respectively. Grandsons Jacob and Josh have experienced the joy of being Nebagamon campers while granddaughters Ava and Jordyn also have had the privilege of outstanding summer camp opportunities. Hearing their stories and descriptions of their summers is a meaningful way to remind us of the value of camp for millions of kids.
We served on the board of a Catholic girls high school in Chicago, and immediately after departing Nebagamon Judy became a board member of Camp of Dreams, a year-round program for kids primarily on the South Side of Chicago who attended Saturday enrichment classes and then enjoyed three weeks of summer camp. Eventually Roger and CN alum Bud and Hazel Herzog became involved as well as the Camp Nebagamon Scholarship Fund, which generously contributed financial support.
In California we’re active with our community’s Employee Scholarship Committee, which provides financial aid for post-secondary education for the families of the people who work where we live. Many of the young recipients are the first in their families to attend college.
For eight years we traveled 25 miles to an elementary school to work with fourth-graders in one of the poorest areas in the country. The parents of most of these youngsters are agricultural and hospitality industry workers, a demographic that offered us a look into the lives of folks far different than ourselves.
Baseball has remained in our lives thanks (sometime not) to the Chicago White Sox and the Chicago Park District, where Roger coached high school athletes for seven years until in his late 60s he no longer was much good pitching batting practice. He also wrote a column about the Sox for 11 years for the website Beachwood Reporter, being a two-time finalist from the Chicago Headline Club for his blog.
More recently Roger served on Camp Nebagamon’s board of directors as Nebagamon birthed its journey into the not-for-profit world.
While the world presents different challenges than when we left Nebagamon in the early aughts, a notable slice of our daily lives continues to instill gratitude and enjoyment. A partial list would include desert sunsets, taking two hours to make a really nice dinner, lifelong friends, Skechers slip-ins, chips from 20 yards (or more) off the green that magically drop into the cup, ice cream, John Coltrane, good doctors who genuinely care, Weber’s 22-inch charcoal grills, watching sports both live and on television, Chicago-style hot dogs, book club, naps, Pilates, and child-centered youth organizations like Camp Nebagamon which have stayed true to their mission offering kids an independent, educational, and fun experience that stays with them for a lifetime.
The View From Here
By Stephanie Hanson and Adam Kaplan
We are just wrapping up our second summer of retirement. If we are being honest, there are many things that we miss about spending the summer up at Camp. We miss that unmistakable smell of pine trees that anyone who has spent time at camp recognizes as soon as they arrive. We miss working with our year-round staff who dedicate so much of their being to supporting Nebagamon. We miss admiring and watching the amazing summer staff that pour so much time and energy into providing life-changing and fun summers for kids. We miss working with parents as they muddle through their first summers away from their kids and the feeling of child-sickeness (a first cousin of homesickness!). We miss the captive audience in the Rec Hall after every meal to workshop our comedic genius (yeah…Adam wrote that). But most of all we miss those kids. We miss that front row seat to watching kids laugh, and grow, and accept challenges, and have unabashed fun.
Still, retirement is not all about what we are missing; retirement has its perks too! It has afforded us some family time that we never had during our summers. One of the things we have always missed out on is the summer family trip that so many get to enjoy. We have tried to make up for lost time with a family trip last summer to Africa, and another amazing one this summer to Alaska. (You may have noticed that apparently we are only interested in 6-letter locations that start and end with the letter “A”. Next summer, we are deciding between Acadia and Ankara!) These have been incredible opportunities to see things we had never seen and spend special time together as a family while our kids are still on school calendars. Another amazing perk we have enjoyed during these two summers is the ability to sleep through the night…and Adam swears his hair is growing back and that he is two inches taller!
We have also really enjoyed watching Nebagamon’s new leadership come into their own. We remain grateful to Camp’s board of directors for their commitment and leadership. We have admired the ability of the year-round camp team to not only maintain what has always been so special, but to actually augment it and make exciting changes to the program that make Camp even better. We have been impressed with their ability to handle challenges with aplomb and grace. Hats off to Noah, Louis, Larry, Katie, Andy, Joe, Jeremy, and Cody. They are amazing.
All is well in Minnesota…