In addition to the satisfaction of an excellent summer camp season, I am extraordinarily excited about the energy surrounding WLC as we prepare to celebrate our 100 years of operation. Committees are in place with participation by trustees, parents and alumni not only to plan our centennial but also to fundamentally strengthen William Lawrence Camp for the future. If you wish to help us in our efforts, please let us know. We welcome you. 

Mark your calendar now for Labor Day Weekend (August 31 through September 2) 2013 and plan to join the festivities.

Nat Crane

We’re always working to keep camp in great shape and make necessary improvements. With a short window in the spring, we try to get as much done in the fall as possible. We are hard at work now.

Arena Soccer

A new activity at camp is Arena Soccer. The campers absolutely love it. Since we added arena soccer two years ago, we have been playing it in the new street hockey area (which way back was the old tennis courts). Three years ago, we divided the old tennis courts to make a proper sized street hockey area, leaving part of the old paved surface for general recreation. It is this remaining area that we are converting into a first class, dedicated area for arena soccer.

With its own space, we will avoid scheduling conflicts with street hockey. The area was recently paved and the boards are under construction. The painting of the surface and other finishing touches will happen in the spring.

Dining Hall

Pratt Hall is getting a facelift. The windows have been in disrepair for a while and the stark brown barn board siding has always seemed out of place in our white clapboard standard at camp. We’re tackling one side at a time, starting with the front this year. It’s looking really nice. Wes Twitchell has been doing the carpentry and Jim Bullitt is taking advantage of the mild November weather to get a jump on the painting.

Power Line Relocation

Other Projects

For several years now, the tennis guys have been asking for a backboard on the George and Gail Jessup Tennis Courts. This will be ready for next summer. Additional poles have been installed along the existing fence to support the backboard, which will be built in the spring.

We’re also planning to repaint the ‘new’ basketball court behind the junior wayside as well as install a proper fence to prevent balls from rolling into the woods.

Nat Crane

William Lawrence Camp's 100th anniversary is in 2013! The Centennial Celebration is set for Labor Day Weekend  2013 (August 31 - September 2) on the Knoll. Please mark your calendars now and plan ahead so you can attend the big event.

In order to kick off the planning for the Centennial, we are sponsoring two alumni events in the spring of 2011, one in New Jersey and one in Massachusetts. The NJ alumni gathering will take place on Sunday, March 27 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm at the Forest Hill Field Club, 9 Belleville Avenue, in Bloomfield. The cost is $10 per person, and a light lunch will be served. All family members are welcome. For more information, please contact Bill McCabe at williammccabe@hotmail.com or 917-705-5572.

The MA alumni gathering will take place on Sunday, March 20 from 1:00 to 4:00 pm. The event will take place at The Concord Colonial Inn, in Concord, MA. As with the NJ event, the cost will be $10 per person, and a light lunch will be served. All family members are welcome. For more information, please contact Geoff McIntosh at gomcintosh@comcast.net or 617-866-0515.

Stay tuned for event details. Invitations will be sent out in January via US Mail and email, and we will post it on the WLC web site and Facebook page. You can help us find Lost Larry’s now by updating the contact information for Larry’s that may have lost touch with camp.

Members of the Centennial Celebration Committee are: Bruce Barton, Martha Erickson, Bob Golledge, Lucy Hancock, Bill Haycock, Pam Helleren, Bill McCabe, Geoff McIntosh, Peter Pineo, and Chris Rae. If you are interested in joining the committee, please contact Lucy Hancock at lucynhancock@gmail.com or 781-749-6877.

Nat Crane

The current Board of Trustees from their meeting in the Library at Camp on July 17, 2010. Back row: Dennis J. Ceru, PhD; Neil F. Hulbert, Esq; Paul Bardelli; Richard C. Brown; Frederick Kopff, Esq; W. Alan Harding; Stephen Weeks. Front row: Lucy Hancock; George W. Butterworth, III, Esq; Charles Cleary, Esq; Gail Avery; Gail Jessup. Not pictured: William J. Haycock.

What do Bill Gates and Nat Crane have in common?  Neither of them is a WLC trustee.  Then again, neither was William Lawrence. Nat may well become a trustee before his days with the camp are past.  Owen Carle, a fellow camp director (1969 – 1973) went on to serve as trustee for more than 30 years after completing his years as director.

Near-death Experience

So, apart from the notables who aren’t trustees, who are the WLC trustees, and what do they do?  You could hardly pick a year better than 1972 to illustrate their determined advocacy for the camp.  The camp season just completed was the most sparsely attended in camp history on the Knoll – only 32 campers in the second session – and it seemed as though the declining attendance of the past several years would finally force the camp to close. The director at the time, Owen Carle, suggested at the final banquet that the camp song be sung with added vigor for “perhaps the last time”.  By October, only the final vote of the trustees remained before the camp would be formally closed.  

Just when the camp’s prospects were darkest, a group of trustees, Orrin Wood, Bob Haycock, and Dick Shepardson, stepped in to lead a campaign of the camp faithful: campers, staff, and friends, to save the camp.  These are the kinds of people you want fighting on your side especially when the odds are long.  They were so committed to seeing the camp experience extended to the next generations of campers that they stopped for nothing to ensure it.

Why did they do it and what is it that appeals so broadly and deeply among the camp faithful?  It’s more than a good time in the fresh air on the Knoll.  In the words of Rev. Ernest Dennen, the president of the trustees for the first ten years of the Knoll era, “A season at camp is worth more than a whole year at school.  Every minute of the day at camp is full.  Surrounded by sincere staff, [the boys] have a keen desire to accomplish things … they are taught to do things that they never believed they could possibly do, and so, gain confidence in themselves and ease their relationships with other people.”

Closer to home, in modern times the personal experience of WLC still resonates for trustees, whether as campers, braves, counselors, staff, parents of campers, or possibly all of these.  Whatever their personal or professional background, each remains committed to preserving the WLC experience and its benefits for future generations of boys. 

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Not surprisingly, many of the trustees’ decisions involve money in one way or another.  Imagine life on the knoll that first year, 1926, before water and septic.  Now that’s camping.  The water system that the trustees authorized after that first year was still going strong more than 50 years later.  Electricity?  Not before the trustees authorized it.  In 1947.  The 1918 group voted to authorize the director to “buy 30 mattresses for the price not exceeding $5.00 per mattress”.  Rumors that several of these mattresses were still in service persisted well into the 50’s.

Some of the trustees’ most significant decisions are not about money at all. Consider the trustees’ decision that WLC would be a camp for boys.  As originally chartered, the camp was to provide “… a suitable place of rest or recreation …for the use of poor persons, men, women, and children”.  By the time the original Gloucester site was outgrown and the camp relocated to the Knoll, the trustees had made possibly the most far-reaching decision of all, opening WLC as an overnight camp for boys.  As is so often the case with decisions well-made, years later it’s hard to imagine that the decision could possibly have been made any other way.  Closer to our time, the trustees’ unanimous selection of Nat Crane as camp director in 1993 was another of these well-made decisions, now almost impossible to imagine any other way.

With each decision and whatever the change to WLC over the years, the trustees remain committed to ensure that what’s at the core of the WLC experience endures.  The Willingness, Loyalty, Comradeship, and Sportsmanship of WLC all begin with the Dedication of trustees. 

The present Board is a mix of past campers and parents all of whom have been associated with the camp for many years. Per By Laws, there are a total of thirteen Trustees. A President, Treasurer, and Secretary are elected from the group. Trustees serve on a variety of committees as prescribed by the President of the Board. Four Trustee meetings are held annually with election of Trustees taking place at the March meeting. Most Trustees have served on the Board for many years.  Five of the present Trustees are members of the Braves Honor Society.

Bob Gallagher

As the Holidays approach many of us are filled with child-like anticipation—for presents under the tree, family returning home, the lighting of Hanukah candles, Santa’s reindeers, football games...Whatever our tradition, this season is bursting with hope of wonderful things to come.

The American Heritage Dictionary describes what goes on inside of us when we anticipate something. Anticipation uses ‘the senses to feel or realize beforehand, to look forward to—often with the implication of foretasting pleasure.’ It also calls forth the following intentions:

• A thought—Whatever we anticipate has to be important enough to even register in our brains.
• A plan—And it is so important that we must mark it as something that will require our attention in the future.
• And an eagerness—that whatever we anticipate will actually happen.  

And I suspect there is also an element of hope.  Otherwise our anticipation turns to worry which deserves a classification of its own.

Since closing ceremony, campers are anticipating lighting their candles on Christmas Eve.   Those who live close to Newton are anticipating a fun night of conversation, pizzas and games at our WLC’s reunion January 7th.  (We are always amazed how far people will travel). And many of us are eagerly awaiting the buds of spring and our anticipation that camp is opening soon.

Happy Holidays.  

We anticipate hearing from you real soon!

Gail Avery

It’s the moments.  The moment that you’re with your friends and something really funny happens.  The world stops because everyone is out-of-control laughing.  I mean the kind of laugh that makes it impossible to breathe, and sends you to the ground.  It’s the kind of thing that when you try to repeat the story to someone else, the description doesn’t do it justice, but you’ll remember it for the rest of your life.  Or it will be the perfect moment.  You’re on a hike. It’s the end of the day. You’re physically exhausted. You’re sitting with your friends, overlooking the rest of the world and having a meal that was cooked over a fire.   You can’t schedule these moments, you can’t name them and you can’t put them in a brochure.  But these moments are the REAL reason you go to camp.  You can’t get them with your X-Box, or by texting, or going to the mall, or just by playing a sport.  These are the moments in between that bind all the rest together.  You can’t plan these moments, but you can set yourself up for one by sending yourself to camp.  Yes, 2010 was a great summer at William Lawrence but next year will be even better, because that’s how camp works.  Each summer is better than the last.  We hope you’ll join us!

Scott Giessler

This is where it all begins…the summer fun! 

Donate on line at www.wlcamp.org.

Ways to give:

• Tax deductible gifts of cash or appreciated stock
• Matching gifts from your employer
• Scholarship funds, permanently restricted
• Planned or deferred giving in the form of trusts, life insurance and bequests

Neil Hulbert

On May 7, 2010, former counselor Joe Bell wrote in an email: Been a long long time!!! Just want to introduce you to the new 'Little Jo'... Baby Jonah Elias Bell. He entered the world just after 5pm on Wednesday the 4th and weighed just under 7lbs.  
Both mother and son are fine.  Below are a few pictures of the happy family.

On July 18, 2010, Former staff member Bevan Verryt wrote: Former Counselor Redge 'foghorn' Vaughn and his partner Michelle had a little baby boy last week, a future camper in the shadows. (Pictures below provided by Facebook.)

Bevan also writes that former staff member Wayne Wright is still living the high life on the Gold coast and is also contemplating the serious life of being an adult.