Kingswood For Life Issue 2

LISTEN TO THE LOONS
HOW WE GOT KINGSWOOD
Part 1
Kids want to know how it happened that the
Wipflers came to own Kingswood. It goes like this:
Both my father and mother were educators in
Elmira, New York near the Finger Lakes region of upstate
New York. In 1951, when I was four years old, dad took
a summer camp job at Camp Norway on Lake Fairlee, in
Ely, Vermont ? not far at all from Kingswood,
coincidentally. My brother Billy at age seven was placed
in Cabin 2, while little Bobby was stuck living with my
mother in a dreary house at the edge of a lagoon coming
off Lake Fairlee. Oh, how I hated that place and I ran
away from mom whenever she was not watching closely.
Oh, come on mom, putting that fragile eye-hook lock on
the screen door was no deterrent whatsoever to this
curious little four year old. Mom, however, died a
thousand deaths every time I was found to be missing
since the trail off to camp went along the edge of the
dark, swampy water. But, I always made it to Cabin 1
where Charley Wilhite or George West slid me under the
bed whenever they heard my mother calling out my
name. I can still hear them today saying ?Oh, no, Mrs.
Wipfler. We have not seen Bobby all day long? ? One
deliriously happy little boy emerged from his hiding place;
he was now a camper!
I have plenty of stories to relate about those
Norway years, but they can wait for another day since this
report needs to fast forward to the Kingswood years.
Simply stated, I stayed at Norway for the next eighteen
years until I had graduated from Washington & Lee
University and taken a teaching position at Landon
School in Bethesda, Maryland. It was through Landon
friends that I met Alice and after we got married in 1971,
I took a summer off from camp to get my Masters Degree
from Georgetown University. That damned near killed
me ? not that the curriculum was difficult ? but I was not
at camp. We fixed that fast and the next summer found
Alice and me at Camp Wachusett on Little Squam Lake
in central New Hampshire.
Alice and I loved every minute of our thirteen
year stint at Wachusett. But, by adding eighteen and
thirteen, you get to thirty-one summers at camping for
me. By 1980 or so, I had gotten the itch to run a camp
on my own.
Graffiti from the Hilly 1 Cabin wall and
ceiling adorn the margins of this report.