A Camp Counselor’s Pair of Sneakers

It was 1982.  I was spending another summer at my summer camp, and I never coveted anything as much I did the pair of high-top Converse Weapon basketball sneakers that my counselor, Todd, wore. Todd was more a tennis player than basketball star and I had more than a few pairs of sneakers of my own. But what I wanted more than anything else was to actually be Todd, and the Converse sneakers that he wore seemed to be the easiest way to make that transformation happen.

Todd was from Maryland, many miles from where I grew up in Philadelphia. He was gregarious and very intelligent – qualities that I couldn’t claim as strengths of mine. Todd was seven years older than me and knew stuff that I didn’t; he loved the Grateful Dead and I didn’t know who Jerry Garcia was, he had traveled to Europe and Israel and my international trips began and ended with Canada. Todd went to Emory University, and I couldn’t name a college that wasn’t in the Final Four. We were not very similar, but I wanted to be just like him. And why did I feel this way?  Because Todd was my camp counselor. For the previous six summers at camp, I had enjoyed the counselors I was assigned. They were sometimes cool, but they were sometimes boring. Some were from nearby places and some had come from overseas. And while a number of them had done a good job, no other counselor was like Todd to me. 

The qualities I’ve already shared were not the primary reasons that I was so enamored with Todd. The real connection I had to him was from the way that he spoke to me and the way that he treated me. He shared his passion for various things in a way that was enthralling, and he was an incredible Storyteller who had the ability to draw me in and to trust him. He would share tales from American history, from Judaism, from his travels around the world, and he taught me about morals and ethics that were important to him and that he felt should be important to me. Todd kept much of his personal and family life totally private – I don’t remember if he was an only child or had siblings – but he seemed to care about everything I was willing to share with him. He advised me when I struggled with things: he gave me a shoulder to cry on when Heather told me that she wouldn’t go to the dance with me, he protected me from Charlie when he assailed me after a basketball game, and Todd let me know of his displeasure when a few of us stepped outside the lines and got caught sneaking out to another cabin in camp.

The sneakers were not so remarkable, but I thought they represented Todd’s essence of cool. Todd knew that I liked them, and for the big game against Camp Akiba he let me wear them (I had to put on a couple of extra pairs of socks to make that work.) And then camp ended in that abrupt way that it always seemed to, and as usual, I was not ready yet to say goodbye. We streamed out of the cabin to high-five each other, without so much as a hug because we were 12 year-old boys and we didn’t do that. I was the last one there when it came time to leave with my parents. Todd came over to me and gave me a hug, and he comforted me after letting go as he saw the tears welling up in my eyes. He told me that he’d see me next summer and he reminded me of some of the things I had learned, how I had done a great job, and that he was proud of the leadership I showed over the previous weeks. I left sad for the sake of losing a big brother, but full of strength for the guidance he had provided.

Todd was not so different than some of the other counselors and role models that spend their summers at camps near and far. In fact, there are staff members that are even more incredible and talented than Todd was at all sorts of camps. Look around as you are preparing to leave a camp at the end of a summer and you will see campers holding onto their staff members that cared for them, desperately wishing that the camp season would not end. In that embrace, they’re quite literally holding onto the role model that they finally found who could understand them. If given the choice, many campers would forgo getting onto the bus or into their parents’ car for tagging along with their counselor just a little bit longer. Sure, they’ve missed their families, their pets, the comfort of a bigger bed and a hot shower, and they are looking forward to eating anything that hasn’t been produced in the camp’s kitchen. But some campers would still rather stay at camp, hugging their counselor, somehow putting off the inevitable end to a relationship that mattered. In 1982, saying goodbye to Todd was a separation that could not be avoided – at best, I could hope to see Todd again in ten months or beg him to respond to a letter that I would send to Emory that he would almost-certainly ignore. Today, campers can hope to stay connected to counselors through social media. But when the summer is over, the summer is over. The impression that a great counselor has made may only sustain through the memories of a child who is soon going to be in the position of giving back to an even younger child in much the same way.

The most valuable asset that a camp has are those young adults and older adults who have committed themselves to lead through their direct impact on the children in a camp’s care. They will never be perfect, and they won’t always say what a camp director wants them to say. But they are great teachers, and they are eager learners. They have boundless energy, and they can be deeply spiritual. They understand the responsibilities they have in such demanding positions, and they’re simultaneously unaffected by the pressure they could feel from the campers and the parents who expect more and more from them each year. Like Todd, they could become the person who by the end of the camp season makes all the difference to ensure that a child’s summer is the very best it can be and in some way helps to support real growth. This is what makes the job of a camp counselor so important.

And maybe, if they’re like Todd, they’ll find a secret moment to slip their pair of white and red Converse sneakers into a camper’s duffel bag before they leave so that they can find an extra-special gift when they get home.