Camp Putnam is My Kinda Place!

Wednesday, January 28th, 2009
by AnnaC

For me summer time can never come fast enough, but not for the reasons you would expect. Most people would think I am looking forward to having a vacation from school and spending all day with my friends. However, since I was about 4 years old, summer has meant something very different to me.

My family has so many connections to Camp Putnam that there is no way it couldn’t mean a lot to me. I attended the camp as a camper with my two brothers between the ages 4 through 13. The camp director was my elementary school principal, and the family who owned and operated the camp lived down the street from my house. Starting in the summer of 2006 I began to become even more attached to Camp Putnam. That summer I began working as a counselor there, which had always been my childhood dream. I had always looked up to my counselors so much, that I wanted to have the same affect on some other little girl in the future. In no time Camp Putnam had made the transition from being the place where I lived out my favorite childhood memories, to the thing that I valued most.

Soon all I could think about was camp. When I could go back, what fun things I could bring with me, new activities to do with the kids, and so on. Working at Camp Putnam has changed the way I view everything. It made me value the things I took for granted, and push aside things I used to value in order to help others. Camp has changed who I am and hopefully it, and I, can continue to influence peoples’ lives.

Camp Putnam is a non-profit organization, which up until June of 2008 was partnered with the Fresh Air Fund Inc. The Fresh Air Fund is dedicated to exposing children from the inner city to rural areas, and new experiences. The camp is located in “the middle of nowhere” New Braintree, MA, and has served children of the greater Worcester area every summer since 1947. The camp holds seven Monday through Saturday morning sessions every summer during July and August.

The majority of children who attend Camp Putnam come from underprivileged backgrounds or are mistreated or even abused. Almost 90% of all kids who attend a session pay a fraction, or none of the standard fee. Campers vary in age from 4-16. The camp also accepts mentally and physically disabled children, as well as foster kids, homeless children, and kids sent by DSS and mental health centers.

Most kids get off the buses on Monday morning complaining “How will I live without my iPod, computer, tv, or cell phone for five days?! I can’t believe I was forced to come here!” But on Saturday mornings when the time comes to go home, every kid is sad and swears he would take care of the many animals he wants to take home with him from the pond. The camp focuses on giving these city kids a once in a life time experience, by giving them the opportunity to do things they have never done or never heard of before. For example, most kids refuse to swim in the leech, frog, turtle, and water snake filled pond. But once they are in the water and they realize they won’t die at swimming today, their excitement is amazing. Other activities include canoeing, arts and crafts, biking, hiking, sports and games, camping, and “Project Putnam”. Counselors are always singing the camp songs while walking places, waiting for other groups, and even the grace before a meal is sung in song. Usually it takes a very long time for us counselors to convince a 13 year old teenage boy to paint a wooden frog, or sing silly camp songs about bears in underwear. However when they finally do the activity, our sense of pride is immeasurable.

The camp’s motto is “care and share”, and a summary of the mission statement might be “every camper’s legacy begins today”. Counselors are told to use the phrase “there’s no wrong way to eat an ice cream cone” when interacting with the kids. An old story passed down through generations of camp staff members is the history of the phrase, and it simply means pick your battles. If Jimmy wants to wear socks on his hands today, go ahead. Every child is valued for their unique talents and abilities. The camp strives to give every child the best week of their year, in a loving environment which may be very different form home. The symbol of the camp, a red feather, is used to help the kids remember the good times they had in the summer. If you stroke a feather downwards, all of the vanes of the feather separate. Each one is meant to represent a happy memory from camp, and every child takes home a red father at the end of the week. Family style meals and bed time stories might be lame to some kids, but in January when its cold and the year might not be off to such a great start, the memories of a summer week spent at Camp Putnam are always there on their feather to brighten any day.

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