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These came in by e-mail and on the backs of programs at the June weekend. Thanks to Bryan Victorino and Erin Jose, who counseled
with me in the nineties and spent most of that Saturday going from table to table with a clipboard. They're in order by the years
each person was at camp, oldest first. Everybody here is all grown up now. Some of them are grandparents. Uncle Ellis would think
that was hilarious.
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EFFIE GOTTSCHALK · camper 1952–1957
I was one of the original nineteen. I was eight. There was no mess hall that first summer, just a cook tent and two long tables under a
tarp, and when it rained we ate standing up under the pines. Aunt Chris made cinnamon rolls in a Dutch oven buried in the coals. The
next spring Uncle Ellis and a bunch of the campers' fathers built the mess hall on weekends, and my dad was one of them, and his
initials are in the beam over the fireplace. I took my grandson up in June and showed him. Sacramento.
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PHYLLIS SPEEGLE · camper 1954–1959
I was terrified of water. My first summer I wouldn't go past my knees. Aunt Chris spent every rest hour for two weeks standing in that
cold lake with me, holding her hands under my back, saying "you can't yet, that's all," until one day she took her hands away and didn't
tell me, and I was floating. By my third summer I passed the Canoe Test. I've been swimming laps three mornings a week for forty years.
I want people to remember that it was the two of them, always. Bakersfield.
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PEDRO CRIST · camper 1956–1961
I was there the night of the bear. July 1959. I want to set the record straight once and for all: it was twelve pancakes. Twelve. They
were left on a tray by the back door to cool, the bear ate them, knocked over a garbage can, and left. Uncle Ellis chased it off with a
frying pan in his pajamas, which is the part that's actually true and that nobody believes. By the time Rose heard the story it was sixty
pancakes and the peanut butter. That's how you know it's a good story. Visalia.
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JOANN GARCIA · camper 1957–1962, counselor 1965–1968
Uncle Ellis taught me to lead songs at the council ring when I was seventeen, which is the reason I've taught elementary school music for
twenty-nine years. His advice: start a little slower than you think, look at the shy kids, and never apologize for your voice. He couldn't
carry a tune to save his life and he sang louder than anybody. As for the moose song, he did write it. I watched him do it on the back of a
mess hall menu in 1966. San Jose.
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STACY JONAS · camper 1967–1972
July 20, 1969. There was no television at camp, and Uncle Ellis knew we'd all be heartbroken to miss it, so he called an extra campfire on
a Sunday night and brought his transistor radio down to the council ring and held it up over his head. Ninety kids sat there in the dusk and
listened to Neil Armstrong step onto the moon, and when it happened, nobody cheered. We were too quiet for that. Then Uncle Ellis turned
off the radio and pointed up, and there it was, over the trees. I was eleven. I still get chills. Redding.
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ROBERT SOBEL · camper 1975–1980
My parents were getting divorced the summer I was nine and I was the most homesick kid in the history of Whitethorn. My counselor did
everything right and finally sent me to Uncle Ellis, per Rule 8. He didn't make a speech. He took me down to the dock and taught me to skip
stones, and we did it every afternoon for a week, and he never asked me one question about home. Then on Friday he asked how I was, and I
told him everything. I'm a fire captain now. When I've got a scared kid on a call, I find something for him to do with his hands. Modesto.
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JOEY GALLAHER · camper 1976–1981, counselor 1985–1987
For the record, my cabin, Conness, 1979, invented the Golden Spatula. It was originally a regular spatula we'd stolen from the kitchen, and
instead of getting us in trouble Uncle Ellis spray-painted it gold and made it a trophy. That was the man in a nutshell. I was also a
counselor the last summer of the old rope swing, before the insurance people made him take it down, and I watched him cut the rope himself.
He kept the knot. It's still hanging over the fireplace in his cabin. Fresno.
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REBECCA VADNAIS · camper 1981–1987, counselor 1990–1993
I was Rose's counselor in Whitney in 1990, and I'd like it on the record that she was a very good camper and a very loud one. I worked under
Uncle Ellis the summers right before and after Aunt Chris died. The summer after, 1993, he still walked the whole camp every night at ten
with his flashlight, checking every cabin, and at the end of his rounds he'd stop at the lake for a minute, by himself. We all knew why. We
left him alone. He was back in the mess hall at 6:45 every morning with the coffee on. Portland, Oregon.
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DANNY PERKINSON · camper 1984–1990
Rose and I started the same summer. She says she cried for three days in 1984. I'd like to add that I cried for four, I was just quieter
about it. Uncle Ellis gave both of us the job of going cabin to cabin with the little hand bell for the Polar Bear Swim
that year, which we were way too young for,
and I figured out about ten years later that he did it on purpose so we'd have something to be in charge of. Same trick as the stones. He
had about a hundred tricks and he used every one. Los Angeles.
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VANESSA MORTENSEN · counselor 1992–1996
I came to Whitethorn as a counselor without ever having been a camper, which made me an outsider for about a day and a half. Uncle Ellis
took me aside the first night and told me I had one job, which was to know the name of every kid in my cabin by breakfast and use it every
time I talked to them. That's it. It's the best advice I ever got, and I use it every day as a nurse. Sacramento.
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DANIELLE BRADSHAW · camper 1989–1995, counselor 1999
Rose was MY counselor, in Dana, 1993, and she was great, so that's three generations of this now. This summer was my first as a counselor,
the first summer without Uncle Ellis on the porch, and on the first night I made my campers say the rules back to me, all eight, like he
always did. One of my girls asked who made them up. I told her about him for about twenty minutes. She asked if she could ring the bell.
I told her: fifth summer. Rules are rules. Chico.
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BRENDA BRANCH · camper 1990–1996
Last summer I drove up just to visit and sat on his porch for an afternoon. He was seventy-eight. He remembered my Canoe Test from 1991, that
my buddy and I lost both paddles and one shoe. He remembered what cabin I was in every year. He asked about my grandmother by name. I don't
know how he did it with all those thousands of kids. I think maybe he just paid attention, which sounds simple, and isn't. Merced.
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WALTER AND CHERYL WICKMAN · counselors 1977–1983, directors since 1995
Thank you all for coming in June, and thank you, Rose, for this page. We had every session full this summer, and more children of
Whitethorn campers than ever. We aren't changing a thing. The bell still rings at 7:30, 12:00 and 5:30, the rules are still on the board by
the door, and his chair is still on the porch of the cabin on the point. Some evenings, if you look down from the council ring, there's a
camper sitting in it, looking at the lake. We let them.
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Got a memory of Uncle Ellis or Aunt Chris? E-mail me and tell me your years and your
cabin. I'll add you.
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Last updated September 6, 1999
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