AT 125! - Camp Dudley
AT 125! - Camp Dudley
AT 125! - Camp Dudley
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Dr. William J.<br />
“Willie” Schmidt,<br />
who for six decades helped<br />
kids to find their way from<br />
modest backgrounds into<br />
America’s oldest continuously<br />
operating summer camp,<br />
died August 8, 2008 in<br />
Elizabethtown, NY. He<br />
was 79.<br />
By far his biggest<br />
contribution, and lasting<br />
legacy, is the dramatic<br />
expansion of the scholarship<br />
program, appropriately<br />
re-named “The William J. Schmidt Annual Scholarship<br />
Fund” in 2004. When Willie took over as Director in 1974,<br />
Annual Giving, which underwrote the program, stood at<br />
$25,000 per year. When he retired twenty years later, it had<br />
reached $250,000 per year. Thousands of boys had the joy of<br />
a <strong>Camp</strong> <strong>Dudley</strong> experience, thanks to Willie’s insistence on<br />
“opening the place up.” A legendary recruiter, Willie said,<br />
“I can tell if a kid is <strong>Dudley</strong> material in a minute,” which he<br />
frequently did, offering astonished boys, he had just met at an<br />
airport, a scholarship to <strong>Dudley</strong>.
Change language