Camp Woodland Memories

Woodland Valley friend and former Camp Woodland camper Bill Horne sent me this great shot of the campers climbing Romer Mountain (the old Simpson ski slope) You can see the old ski lodge in the background. If you look behind the lodge you can still see the train trestle which was still there in 1954 when this photo was taken.

Bill Horne is working on a book about Camp Woodland. It includes historical information about Woodland Valley and the surrounding Catskill region. Bill has promised to let us know when the book is ready. I think it might be of interest to many people here in the valley. I know I would like to read it.

For those of you who are new to the valley, Camp Woodland was a left leaning, progressive camp for youngsters in operation in Woodland Valley from 1939 to 1962. The collection and preservation of folk songs was a big part of the camp and Pete Seeger was an active part of the camp for many years. Here is a website that has some information for those of you who would like to read more.

http://www.campwoodland.org

This image is from the Norman Studer Papers, M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives, University Libraries, University at Albany, SUNY

Camp Woodland Reunion Great Fun!!

Another thing that I am late with here on the blog (good thing this isn't a newspaper or I would be fired) is a message from WCA member Bill Horne regarding the Camp Woodland reunion a couple of weeks ago. The Phoenicia part of the reunion took place n Parish Hall which is where 3 of the 4 videos below were shot. Here is what Bill had to say.


"The Camp Woodland reunion in Albany and Phoenicia was a great success. Pete Seeger, his wife Toshi and daughter Tinya made an unscheduled appearance.  For any who are interested here are some videos:"

Camp Woodland Reunion

I got the message below from Sue Rosenberg regarding the upcoming Camp Woodland  reunion this weekend. She asked me to pass it along to all of you. Since the camp was in Woodland Valley I thought some of you might be interested in going to this and exploring local history. 

- Carol

Hi, I am a former camper at Camp Woodland (oh so many years ago). WCA member Bill Horne suggested that I send you a note about this weekend's Camp Woodland reunion. On Sunday we are having the second half of the reunion at the Parish Hall in Phoenicia. This is going to be a Folk Festival with lots of music and stories and poems about camp and the Catskills. Its open to the public and I think its going to be great fun.

I have attached a press release about it if you want to share it with anyone up at Woodland Clove.

Sorry for the late notice.

Hope you can make it,

- Sue

Folk Festival and the Spirit of Camp Woodland

On July 15th from 1-5 pm, in the old Parish Hall on Main St in Phoenicia, there will be a celebration of  the music, stories and spirit of Camp Woodland. Camp Woodland was a progressive summer camp in Phoenicia which brought together a diverse group of children, counselors musicians  and folklorists from NYC and across the county. It was known for collecting folk songs and lore of the Catskills and promoting and preserving the regional heritage.  Each summer the camp director Norman Studer, took campers and counselors on trips throughout the Catskill Mountains to learn about and collect  the traditions, music and folk lore of the mountains, bringing both the music and new made friends back to camp.

At the end of each summer Woodland put on a Folk Festival of the Catskills . Local musicians and their music mingled with Cantatas, dances and plays written at camp and music brought to camp from around the world as well.

On Sunday, as part of a weekend long Camp Woodland reunion,and in the spirit of those Festivals,  A Folk Festival of the Catskills will be held in Phoenicia.

Performers will include former campers and counselors including Eric Weissberg, Karl Finger, Mickey Vandow, Pat Lamanna, Robert and Louise DeCormier, Niela Miller, Dan Mack. In addition there will be Bob Lusk of the Heritage Music and Laurie and Ira MacIntosh-local story tellers.   Members of the Hudson Valley Folk Guild will present a cantata written by Camp Woodland music counselor and noted composer and folklorist Herbert Haufrecht.  Titled "We've Come From the City," the cantata deals with the conflict that arose when parts of the Catskills were flooded to make reservoirs to supply drinking water to New York City.  Lydia Adams Davis, Frank Tetler, Steve Allen, and others will play the parts that the children of Camp Woodland played when it was originally performed, and Linda Bresnahan-McCarthy is the music director.

Open to the Public -$10 donations suggested.

For information call Sue Rosenberg -845-246-3449

Camp Woodland Reunion

I got a message last week from WCA member Bill Horne (a former Camp Woodland camper). The alumni are planning a couple of events this summer that celebrate the former camp. Here are the details that Bill has provided. 

Camp Woodland is having an official and well-planned reunion this summer. On July 14 we gather at SUNY Albany where the camp’s files, documents,  audio recordings and photos are archived. On July 15 we will be in Phoenicia.

I believe both days are open to anyone. Below is the web address for Albany event. The Phoenicia event will be held at the Parish Hall in Phoenicia. Lots of folk singing.

http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/findaids/eresources/studer/campwoodland.htm

Camp Woodland Exhibit

Bill Horne, WCA member and former Camp Woodland camper, wrote me recently to let me know that the Woodstock Historical Society is having an exhibit and celebration of Camp Woodland. Below is a link to the schedule of events if anyone would like to check it out.

Woodstock Historical Society - Camp Woodland Exhibit

Recollections of Claude Yerry

Below are some memories of Claude Yerry from Woodland Valley camper Bill Horne who was lucky enough to be present when Mr. Yerry talked to the young people at the camp. I have published one of the photos of Mr. Yerry before but I thought that with the addition of these recollections it was worth putting up again. Enjoy the history!
- Carol

"Campers from Camp Woodland met with the Claude Yerry to talk about local history. He was among the many Catskill folk who extended their hospitality and kindness to us campers. The October 22, 2008 posting on the Woodland Valley View has several photos of Claude Yerry. The last is a detail of a photo of a meeting between campers and Claude. The full photo is attached along with a follow up photo of the campers who used information gathered from Claude Yerry to write and perform a small dramatic work about Woodland Valley. Please see the text.

Photo A, taken in the summer of 1952, shows the group meeting with him. I was a member of the group (although not in the frame of the photo) and have a reasonably clear general memory of the meeting. I was impressed with the warmth he showed to us and how we feasted on the stories and lore he shared with us."
- Bill Horne























Test Below Photo:

Gathering Material For A Play

Group 3 spent an evening chatting with Mr. and Mrs. Claude Yerry up Woodland Valley. Mr. Yerry is an old resident of the Valley, and his memory goes back to the bustling old days when the lumber mills and the bluestone quarries still gave many men employment. He told about the Snyder tannery that stood along the Woodland road.

Out of this trip and several others they had taken to Samsonville, the children had reconstructed a picture of the changing valley, from the days of the tanneries through the quarrying period to the present time.






















Text below Photo:

Acting Out The Past

The Children made a play about the history of Woodland Valley, centering their story around an Irish family that emigrated to America to escape the potato famine, and came to work in the Synder tannery. The family experienced the many changes in the valley and finally sold their land to the founders of Camp Woodland.

In this scene the family discusses what to do next, now that the tannery has moved away, due to the exhaustion of the tanbark supply.

Blogmistress Note: I asked Bill Horne where he got these pages. This was his reply to me.

"The photos are from the 1952 Camp Woodland Year Book. Camp Woodland had a year book for almost every summer season. In my 11 summers there I never made it into the yearbook although I came close, as in the Claude Yerry photo."

Thanks for sending us this history Bill.

Mike Todd – Catskill Woodsman

Mike Todd was a Catskill woodsman who spent seven summers at Camp Woodland until he died in 1960. A noted bear hunter and teller of tall tales, Mike Todd described Mike Todd – Catskill Woodsman himself as the biggest liar in Ulster County. He was also an observer at Balsam Lake Fire Tower from 1919 to 1947. He had an uncanny ability to describe the exact location of fires he spotted.


He usually dressed in an old long sleeve lumberjack shirt buttoned tight to the collar (even in the summer), pants baggy above his knees, held up by suspenders, and gathered tightly at his thighs by long laced boots. His broad brimmed round hat set off his craggy, worn face. At age 75, he still played the harmonica, holding it in his left hand accompanied by “bones”, musical instruments consisting of two flat, hardwood maple sticks that he held between his fingers and cracked together for rhythm and danced a jig all at the same time.

Mike Todd had, as did many others who Camp Woodland came to know, a great respect for craftsmanship. Respectful care for tools was important to him. Even the appearance of a tool became connected to its use. When complemented on the attractiveness of a tool he had forged, Mike said “It ain’t nice fer purdy, but it’s hell for stout.”

Below Mike demonstrates a shingle-shaving “horse” which he made for the Camp Woodland Museum.













One of the tricks that Mike taught campers was how to locate honey bee hives. He placed a bowl of sugar water on a flat piece of wood attached to the top of a post. Once the bees discovered the sugar water, Mike watched the direction they took back to the hive. Then he would move the post with the sugar water to another location and watch the new direction taken by the bees back to the hive. Where the two bee lines intersected was a pretty good approximation of the hive’s location.

This was sent to me by WCA member and former Camp Woodland camper Bill Horne. It is a great piece of Woodland Valley History. Thanks for sending it Bill!

Memories of Camp Woodland

Here is a post sent to us by Bill Horne one of our newest WCA members. Bill spent summers at Camp Woodland from 1950 to 1960. Thanks for sharing your memories with us Bill!

Folk Festival of the Catskills at the Simpson Memorial Ski Slope

"The photo shows Norman Studer, director of Camp Woodland, introducing Nellie Bly Ballard at the 1960 Folk Festival of the Catskills held at the base of the Simpson Memorial Ski Slope. The ski slope is located at the beginning of the Woodland Valley Road. The Folk Festival, held each August, featured the creative works of many Catskill residents. The audience sat on benches around a stage and on the ascending ski slope which is now somewhat overgrown. In the background is a row of poplars that lined the boundary of the ski slope and the Woodland Valley Road.

Using the camp as a base, campers went on frequent trips into the Catskill mountain communities to collect folk songs, stories and history. Many of these Catskill residents were born between 1870 and 1900 and had grown to adulthood during the transition from the age of homespun to industrialization. They were the last generation brought up to handle a flail, shape a wooden spoon, skim milk by hand from a flat pan. They had learned a way of life from parents who had been adults during the Civil War and from grandparents who had been alive in the 1840s when the age of homespun had reached its apogee in small-town New York.

By the time campers came to know them, their older pattern of living had largely been displaced and pushed into a dimly remembered past. Most lived on marginal farms or in little villages in narrow upland valleys or on mountain slopes. Often they were the third generation on their land. Their own children and grandchildren had hurried off to the cities to find work. And when these folks could no longer till the land by themselves, they watched it grow over with uncut grasses, with red sumac, and eventually with trees.

But their deep-lying roots in their culture gave these people an unmistakable dignity and serenity, even in the face of aging, sickness, and for some, long-inured poverty and despite their recognition that life had already passed them by and progress had rendered obsolete what they were familiar with. They retained a natural self-esteem of those whose American identity developed in an era when men and woman relied on themselves for many of the necessaries of daily life; and who, in the age of homespun, found opportunities to exercise their creative potential.

Campers appreciated the importance of these songs and stories to their Catskill neighbors. In the process of collecting them, these neighbors responded warmly to the eagerness and respect of the campers who came to learn from them. They sang and told stories cheerfully and graciously for their new found friends and appreciated the tribute of having their songs honored and enjoyed, and learned and sung back to them by a new generation."

- Submitted by Bill Horne, former resident of the Woodland Valley at Camp Woodland.