CAMP READ ASSOCIATION

To set the stage and bring you up to date from my previous story: it’s 1948, the Fenimore Cooper Council, B.S.A. had just purchased the Great Camp known as the Hermitage in the Adirondacks from C. L. Collins, Fred Smith was the Scout Executive and he had just hired Art Boland to be the year-round Ranger for the property.

As previously mentioned, Art was not only the Ranger, but was a major part of the program that set the tone for what became the “magic” of Camp Read. His unique personality was infectious, creative and fun. He liked to play games (charades), sing songs and create adventures.

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This part of Camp history is comprised of excerpts from Art’s book: 

From Early in the Morning; The Life and Times of Art Boland; Chapter 3: The True Story of Camp Read. (1) The first limited edition of the book was published in December 2000.

I hope you can get a feel for Art’s personality from his own writing. He was quite a character and made work and life fun! He was 85 when he wrote the book so his memory of events and their order was not as keen, understandably, as it once was.

His writing still contains Art’s warm and captivating style. For those of us who had the pleasure of knowing and working with Art, it is possible to hear his voice spinning his life’s endless web of tales as you read along.

Art in his own words:

"I was talking with Lizzie Hill, the wife of the caretaker of the Heller Estate where I had worked the previous two summers. Her brother came along and told us that the scouts had just brought the Hermitage property and that they were looking for a Ranger to oversee it. Lizzie said I should go and see about it, for these jobs were few and far between, as the saying goes. Thanks to God and Lizzie Hill I got the Ranger’s job, which did not ingratiate me with some of the townspeople as I was practically an outsider and this was their town.

It was nearing the end of August of 1948 when I got the job. Fred Smith did not want to ruffle Mr. Heller’s feathers since he was our next door neighbor. So a time was agreed upon when Mr. Heller could spare me – when the hay was in the barn. We got the hay in the barn three days before the end of the month. Because I left with three days to go, one of them a Sunday, he docked me $60. when he paid me off. That’s why he was so rich. He once argued with the milkman about why chocolate milk cost a penny more than white.

I came to the scouts $60 short but have never regretted it, even to the last day, because I made some of the greatest friends I’ve ever had. To show you that I remember, I’ll name a few: Peter, Jim, Allan, Dick, Fred, Jack, Jay, George, John, Bob, Al, Leroy, Ralph, Louie, Ed, Brendan, Charlie, Shylock, Dan, Tiny, Rusty, the Venuti Brothers, Tony, Albert, etc., etc. I had those etc’s just in case I left out someone really important.

We had contractors come in to look the place over and give us bids to install a dam for a reservoir, convert the big horse barn into a dining hall, add a kitchen to the proposed dining hall, etc., etc., etc. Also in late 1948 (I put 1948 in four digits just in case of that Y2K thing), three guys came to camp driving an old, old pick-up truck. Their names were John Hindle, John Farley, and last but not least, Bob Johnson. They came expecting the new Ranger to have a beard, a typical mountain man. After all, this was the Adirondacks and they didn’t expect a Ranger fresh out of the service, clean shaven, and born and raised in Brooklyn, NY to boot.