I am UniCamp Story

I am UniCamp was originally created in 1985 by Sheila Kuehl to celebrate UCLA UniCamp's Fiftieth Anniversary.

I am UniCamp. I am tall pines with tops lost in more stars than the city sees in a hundred years. I am a river that everyone will call The Stream tickling my way over rocks that seem to shift as you look at them. I am golden leaves in the fall and cobalt blue skies in summer. I am the bats squeaking at dusk, squirrels mistrustful of everything, blue jays always out of humor. I am more silence than your most peaceful dreams. I am waiting for you to find me.

I am UniCamp. I am Gram Gunther and her "boys", looking for a way to practice humanity, not simply to preach it. I am Tony Berardo, sleeping on a cot in the basement of the first URC, thinking of a potent mixture of children and mountains and college students just beginning to explore compassion and love and service and unselfishness. I am a model A Ford, the first camp truck, rattling its wheels off on roads that are largely rocks and imagination, splashing through The Stream, carrying things that will become a camp.

I am UniCamp. I am a camp near Big Pines, but for ten days in 1935 I belong to the UCLA students and the little boys who make up my very first session. I am a baseball and horseshoes and a little swimming pool not very far from camp. I am the shyest camper, the one the counselors privately call Surly, but by the end of the session, I win the Camp Jokester award and everyone can hear me laugh. I am Jim Harding, a counselor at that first session, who comes away wondering... if camp is for the kids, how come I learned so much myself? I am a blank slate, a camp to be invented as we go along, nurtured by Gram's concern for her sons and daughters and how they will grow.

I am UniCamp. I am the children of poverty who've never seen the mountains. I am one of twenty campers at the first diabetic session and Luke Fishburn and Don Marsh are two of my counselors. I am learning to live with my condition, to take care of my health and, most importantly, that I am not alone. Like many diabetic children, I have trouble with my legs and Luke and Don carry me on their shoulders on the hikes. Dr. West and Dr. Grishaw are my kings, treating the counselors royally and giving the children horseback riding and trips to Jenks Lake.

I am UniCamp. During World War II, I am Gram, keeping the camp going with high school students for counselors, finding food and supplies when no one else could. I am glad when the war is over. After the war, my equipment improves, with army and navy surplus cots and blankets. I am meals cooked and served in Brown, tents with wooden floors. I am a pack of donkeys strolling through the camp and a cacophony of bleating in the middle of the night. I am the donkey who refuses to go on the overnight, no matter how Irv and Les threaten and cajole me.

I am UniCamp. I am rain, rain, rain and children cooped up in Brown making their head counselors crazy by calling their names over and over. I am the head counselor who had the first theme day, a wild west party. I am counselors singing at night and counselor's campfire and crafts and archery and hiking and swimming. I am the kitchen wench*, saving two summer's wages to buy a typewriter. I am learning to swing dishes in baskets to dry them, to make an award out of almost anything, and, seemingly without even thinking about it, I am learning the value of all people. I am learning love.

I am UniCamp. I am rain rain rain and rushing kids into the tents in the middle of the night. I am the camp newspaper, the Daily Blab, and kids who smile and poke each other at campfire when they hear me say their names. Even though it is the fifties, and my generation is reputed not to care, I care.

I am UniCamp. I am the counselor who was sent home for sneaking into the girls' camp down the river. I am the head counselor who held everybody's watch during the swim carnival and then, forgetting everything in the joy of the moment, happily jumped in the end. I am, thanks to Don Marsh, a modernized camp, with electricity and new water system and hot water. I am a brand new lodge named after Tom Evans. I am a counselor who died in Korea.

I am UniCamp. I am the site of a miracle. A forest fire, started by hunters or public campers downstream, sweeps upriver toward me with breathtaking speed. It is younger girls session and I am the head counselor who decided, for some reason, not to take the girls on a lunch hike to the Meadow. Instead we go to South Fork campground. Had we gone to the Meadow, we would all have been trapped by the fire. The fire burns its steady way upstream to within feet of the camp and then, deflected by a tiny rise we had never noticed, jumps to the upper road and over Sugarloaf. I am the children at that session, scared and too excited to go to bed. I am Luke Fishburn trying to think of something that will calm them down. That night, Lion Hunt is invented and performed three times. I am Kim and Art and Luke and Irv, playing bridge all night at the flagpole by the light of a Coleman lantern, watching the fire burn itself out. I am tired, but I am still here.

I am UniCamp. I am the high school student who always knew I'd counsel at camp. I am the counselor just off the bus who is sent off to Siberia with the biggest kids, the ones who can convince you that monsters are roaming the woods. I am the counselor with the camper so furious, there is just nothing to do but pull her into the shower with me and douse us both until we can't help but laugh. I am the Julia Child of the woods, the cookout counselor who, finding a few mousies in the batter left overnight, and knowing a counselor never loses her cool, announces to the kids that today we will learn to make "furries in a blanket".

I am UniCamp. I am learning that Luke begins every sentence with "There will be" and not "will there be?" I am more competent than I've ever thought I could be. I am dead tired at night, listening to every sound that reaches the head counselor's tent and wondering what else can go wrong. I am the counselor that led the whole camp, singing Cumbaya, to the chapel and then couldn't find it for twenty minutes.

I am UniCamp. I am Sunday night Camp Board meetings and great desserts and driving up to Fiji hill and chasing all the parked cars away and singing for hours after the meeting. I can do it, whatever needs to be done. Camp Drive week, or being tired and dirty for ten days, or calmly picking up a snake or putting a new roof on Evans or driving through a river or holding ten children all at the same time or getting covered with shaving cream at campfire or loving more than I ever knew I had in me. I learned at camp that I could do it all.

I am UniCamp. I am the pandemonium of lizard races in a big chalk circle. I am camp Olympics and The Old Man in the Mountain and biffy boards and I am not ashamed to cry when the buses leave. I am a college student whose world is an island of beer busts and football games until I spend my first night with eight little boys who know more about the world than I do. I am a whole campful of people with a lot to learn.

I am UniCamp. I am a whole new site, the Upper Site, racing to open on time. I work all year, summer to summer, every weekend, cutting down trees and making a road and digging trenches for the pipes. Waiting for a final inspection on the gas lines, I decide to turn them on anyway. It is diabetic session and the notion of cooking every meal outside is a nightmare. Though I have visions of ending up in jail, the inspector, who must know we've had the gas on illegally and have turned it off again, just for him, simply winks and approves the system. I am a gaggle of couselors on a work weekend, all thumbs and hammers, struggling to finish one more A-frame before dark. We circle our cars, with the headlights on, and drive the last nail before dinner.

I am UniCamp. I am nature seen in a whole new way, a chapel of trees where everyone instinctively whispers. I am the sound of wind in the trees that swells the heart. I have an unexplained lump in my throat when a child takes my hand. No matter how cold the wind is, I have never been so warm as I am standing in that circle serenading the kids at bedtime. The kids don't want to go home. Neither, frankly, do I.

I am UniCamp and it is the incredibly variegated decade known as the sixties. I range from the female counselors who felt daring wearing men's t-shirts and no makeup to the later counselors who were not afraid to believe that the whole world could be changed. I am rain rain rain and scattering from counselor's campfire to move the kids inside the A-frames in the middle of the night. I am a blind session and the first teen-age session and City College and ECTP. I am the beginning of ethnic sessions with all the fear and anxiety I feel about confronting my own racism for the first time. I think for the firs time I understand the phrase "no pain, no gain".

I am UniCamp. I am a first-time counselor and if I hear my kids yell "who's got my sock" one more time, I'm leaving. I am taking a poopout but I can't sleep, listening to all the sounds of a camp incredibly continuing without me for an hour. I am the new P.D.'s house at upper site, named after Dick Sather, who was my first friend to die in Vietnam. I am the counselor, just home from a session, who says to herself, "That was a real growing experience, and I'm never going back there again." I am the camper who calls ten minutes later to report that my mother won't let me knock a hole in the roof of my room so I can see the stars. I am the reunion that can't wait to happen. I am a counselor the next summer.

I am UniCamp. I am the Resistance, a group of alumnus and counselors and children who band together to keep the government from taking UniCamp's land for public campgrounds. I am two hundred children marching on the Federal Court Building from Chinatown and East L.A., resplendent in Woodsey t-shirts and whistling the colonel Bogey march. I am the camp movie that showed the hearing Board that love was more important than motorcycles and hiking trails. I am UniCamp and I survive because of love.

I am UniCamp. I am Mardi Gras and in the Seventies I am a big deal. I am the counselors who came to Camp because of Mardi Gras, thinking there must be some elaborate interview system and being chosen without one. I have inherited the fruits of the seeds of the sixties. I know I want to reach outside myself and yet I know I share the same sense of wonder and discovery as all the generations of counselors before me.

I am UniCamp. And I'm having a few difficult times. It is the end of the ethnic sessions and few people appreciate the success of those strange experiments. The children seem to understand, though, and marvel that people like them can be in charge of things, can go to college, are making plans for their lives. It is a difficult time, but we feel we are being part of the solution and not just continuing the problems. I am the last diabetic session and the first coed session. I am Tamis Long, who could always get a smile out of anybody. I am Bear, who tells the best stories ever heard and has a knack for getting people to do things no one else can get them to do. I am flush biffies, finally making my debut after years of opposition. I am counselors still getting letters from their campers years later, and sometimes invitations to their weddings.

I am UniCamp. I am each counselor's special place at Camp. I am the beds at the first unit I ever counseled at, the porch of Evans or Gunther or the hospital, the campfire, the chapel, the poopout, the counselors, the biffy, the stream, the flagpole, the showers. I am the wench bringing snacks down to the counselor's campfire. I am the sparks rising into the night from that fire. I am every counselor who ever counseled saying "Gee, I haven't seen what I looked like for ten days." And I don't care.

ADDENDUM INCLUDED 6/90 (by unknown source)

I am UniCamp. I am every counselor that learned to dance from the kids. I am the From and the Monkey and the Frog and the Funky Chicken, and in the Eighties I am Bumping and Breaking and Rapping. I am rain, rain, rain. I am delivering wet mail and I am kids cooped up in Brown screaming our names, and I am new crafts invented on the spur of the moment. I am a Special Olympics Session, and all coed sessions, and a counselor wondering whether there wasn't some value to having all girls or all boys at a session. I am the first Monkey's Fist. I am a canoe skimming across the surface of Jenks Lake in the new waterfront program. I am the new WALL program filled with excitement of older campers as they reach the summit of San Gorgonio Mountain. I am a new program in higher education and career opportunity. I am a camper thinking for the first time that I can be anything I want to be.

I am UniCamp. I am a camp with the spirit of the Eighties -- a spirit that we can do anything. I am the return of UniCamp Week, and the appearance of a human pine tree on Bruin Walk. I am a bucket passed around in a classroom and filled with thousands of nickels and dimes and quarters. I am a Phon-a-thon and hundreds of phoners, and I am a Marathon and thousands of runners. I am campers and counselors marching in the UCLA Homecoming Parade. I am counselors so bonded that we meet every Thursday near Bruin Walk just to catch up. I am generations of Camp marriages and new, extended families. I am a tree that falls with a thud on the roof of Gunther, and I am hundreds of camp alumni that come to my rescue so that I am repaired in time for summer. I am the energy of work weekend volunteers. I am a green plastic biffy...one that makes everyone groan even more than the old ones. I am new lights in Brown and Evans, and a remodeled infirmary, and new showers, and a bigger campfire circle, and a gleaming new flagpole. I am a camp that is growing to serve even more campers and counselors... I am a seventh session, and then an eighth session. I am new temporary tent units. I am a camp that, after 54 years, finally grows up as its own independent program. I am a camp with a sense of boundless opportunities and of boundless optimism.

I am UniCamp. I am the camp that was built by bridge builders...students bridging the gap between themselves and others...reaching out to children in the belief that all kids deserve a chance. I am those first 11 counselors who realized that a food drive for poor children simply wasn't enough, and so, started a camp. I am today's counselors realizing that 8 days in the mountains may not be enough and so I am thinking about starting a year-round program. I am the latest of a very special tradition of counselors, people who came up to camp naive and just, somehow, grew up there. I am students of the "We" generation, not the "Me" generation -- students who learned how good it feels to give. Just like when you look slightly to the side of a star at night, and find that you can see it even better, somehow, just when you think you're pouring all your energy into the kids, looking away from yourself for a change, somehow it turns out you're the one who grows. I am more than fifty years of counselors and kids and cooks and maintenance workers and program directors and camp directors and camp Boards and Mardi Gras and Camp drives, and busses arriving and busses leaving, and singing and laughing, and rain and sun and the endless whispering of the winds through my trees. I am more than fifty years of UniCamp, and I'm ready for fifty more.

ADDENDUM INCLUDED Feb. 24, 1996
Leadership Training Weekend by HC, HCA's and WALL Advisors

I am UniCamp. I am the joy and excitement of a child that sees her first squirrel pass by. I am transition, taking down biffy boards at Evans in the hopes to pass on Lower Site traditions. I am the Head Counselor Assistant who has doubts whether an oldest boy on heavy medication is having fun when I see him sleeping through half the activities. I am that same Head Counselor Assistant who watches with sheer joy this same boy smile for the first time when at chapel he reminisces about the fun he had. I am the unit of girls who prayed for our counselor who was too weak to stand on her own. I am that same counselor who sobbed when at last after all my efforts, my girls united.

I am UniCamp. I am the work weekend spent moving camp from Lower Site to Lakota not knowing the dust and heat to be any less Woodsey than the rocks and streams at lower site. I am the unit walking for what seemed like miles from the meadow to the pool. I am the asphalt parking lot that the kids hiked six miles uphill to sleep on. I am the counselors packing up UniCamp for the weekend to make room for the Girls Scouts. I am the Woodsey spirit that survives in our hearts, despite having no physical home.

I am UniCamp. I am born amongst laughter, joy, fear frustration and hope. My birth is anticipated for months, yet my life spans only seven days. But in those seven days, I have lived lifetimes. I learn to tread uneven ground. I see my first shooting star. I meet a rainbow of people and find a pot of gold. Then, the inevitable surprises me. I celebrate my death with quiet reflection on smiles, laughter, hugs and tears. But I know my death is not in vain because the vehicle that carries me away brings in a new life.

I am UniCamp. I am the volunteers brought in to serve as positive role models exposing both campers and counselors to cultural diversity, the excitement of higher education, the importance of respect and the value of self worth. I am Alpha Phi Alpha, Alpha Kappa Alpha and Phi Beta Sigma celebrating African-American history through dance. I am Alpha Chi Sigma demonstrating the wonders of science. I am MECha and Samahang commemorating traditional indigenous folk art and dance. I am Ahmad and 92.3 the Beat encouraging rhythmic voices of the community. I am Adrianne Waters, the USC basketball coach, an African-American reminding youth to pursue their dreams.

I am UniCamp. I have changed many times from Lakota to now Camp Singing Pines. I have been occupied by many people. Native Americans, pioneers, Girl Scouts. I am alive again with children taking their first canoe trip in my lake. All this is new to me. Over 800 kids have occupied me for one summer. But now I find my numbers dwindling because of financial difficulties. Nevertheless, I will survive because of the dust, blood, sweat and tears of the volunteers. As long as my kids take away something from me, I will be Camp Singing Pines.

I am UniCamp. I am UniCamp. I am surviving amidst uncertainty. I have no place to call home and am waiting for parental guidance. The fire at SKU followed me to the city, igniting civil unrest in 1992. It made it's way to Mardi Gras, eventually closing its doors just four years later. I am continually searching for funding. I am sad to serve only six sessions and even so still struggling for counselors. Yet I find strength from expanding goals and working towards integration with W.A.L.L. I am not sure people know who I am anymore, but I feel the love and support to continue to live and grow.

I am UniCamp. I am UniCamp turning sixty. I am chapel, sixty years of new faces in an old tradition. On my 60th anniversary, I am faced with new challenges that will force me to rise and continue to grow. I am still UCLA students bound together for the love of children, from the past into the future.

I am UniCamp reprinted with permission from Sheila Kuehl

* Editor's Note: "wench" was a colloquial, and at the time non-derogatory term used to describe the assistants.