Camp of friends
Jewish summer retreat’s 30th anniversary draws generations
With a local high school drum line providing a funky beat, youths marched into Temple B’nai Israel alongside adults who smiled and giggled as much as their younger counterparts.
The lively parade of current and former campers and camp counselors provided a festive beginning for the much anticipated 30th anniversary celebration for Camp Chaverim. An estimated 300 people — including the camp’s first director — joined the intergenerational gathering at the temple where the Jewish day camp has been held each summer since 1988.
Elise and Trace Gordon, a brother and sister from Oklahoma City, were among the first to arrive at the July 19 event.
Trace Gordon, 31, said he started at Camp Chaverim as a toddler. Now, his 2-year-old son, Luka, is a camper, following in his dad’s footsteps.
“I think it’s like the best
place ever,” he said.
His sister, Elise, 24, felt sentimental about revisiting the camp that has been part of the community for three decades. “It’s been really emotionally charged for me. So much of my childhood has been centered
around this place,” she said. “It’s like an enormous family in the sense that I’ve known many of these people since I was a toddler.”
Debra Goss, 24, a former camper who is Jewish, shared similar sentiments.
A schoolteacher who returns to Camp Chaverim each summer, Goss said she started as a camper at age 2 and found her niche as a camp counselor in charge of making challah bread for the camp’s weekly version of Shabbat.
“Camp would not be the same if I did not do challah on Friday,” she said, grinning.
Angus McMillin, 20, said he traveled from Pennsylvania to help celebrate the camp’s milestone anniversary.
He said he arrived at the camp when he was 4 and returned each summer until he was 16. McMillin said he had been looking forward to reuniting with his fellow campers and camp counselors.
McMillin said, like the Gordons, he is not Jewish, but he enjoyed learning about Judaism and many other cultural traditions at Camp Chaverim. He said his favorite aspect of the camp was learning about
the Jewish Shabbat or sabbath, and competing in the camp’s traditional Maccabiah Day, an activity-filled and zany twist on the Maccabiah Games, an athletic competition often called the “Jewish Olympics,” held every four years in Israel.
“It was a different sort of culture that I got immersed in. I’ve made some lifelong friends,” McMillin said.
Pamela Richman, the camp’s longtime director, spent much of the evening hugging former campers, their parents and supporters as they all reminisced.
She said the family environment and friendly camaraderie that Camp Chaverim (Chaverim means “friend” in Hebrew) became known for was exactly what the Jewish Federation of Greater Oklahoma City envisioned when it started the camp 30 years ago.
“It’s so much of a family affair,” she said.
Pooling resources
Richman and Marcy Price, the camp’s former program director, said Garth Potts, a former Jewish Federation executive director, was instrumental in starting Camp Chaverim.
Price, who formerly worked for the Jewish Federation, said Temple B’nai was considering closing its 1950s-era swimming
pool because it needed extensive repairs. She said temple leaders also planned to end a youth summer camp that had been open to temple members only.
Price said Potts had the idea for the federation to pay for the pool repairs. He also wanted to keep the summer camp open but expand it to include youths from the nonJewish community.
She said the board of directors for Temple B’nai and Jewish Federation met together and decided that Potts’ idea was worthy, that it would serve the Jewish community and the general community better if the camp and pool were taken over by the federation. “So, it was meant to extend friendship beyond the temple,” Price said.
Potts hired Charki Dunn to become the camp’s first director, and she served in that capacity for five years before moving to Chicago.
Dunn still resides in Chicago, but she said she heard about Camp Chaverim celebrating its 30th summer and knew she wanted to be a part of it. She said she was thrilled to learn that specialty camps for older youths and many other concepts she introduced were still part of the Chaverim setting. “It’s like my baby,” she said of the camp.
Israeli Scouts perform
Other highlights of the camp celebration included the enthusiastic drum line from Putnam City West High School led by one of the Camp Chaverim senior counselors Eddie Hudson Jr., who is Putnam City West’s band director.
Also, young people with the Israeli Scouts Friendship Caravan performed numerous songs and dances as part of the celebration, intentionally timed to include their annual visit.
The Israel Scouts Friendship Caravan program brings Israeli teens to the United States each summer where they serve as ambassadors for their country. The friendship caravan is one of the programs of Friends of Israel Scouts Inc., whose mission is to develop and maintain a connection between the Tzofim (Israel Scouts) and Jews in North America.
Watching the Israeli Scouts perform, Jewish Federation Director Roberta Clark said the goodwill ambassadors’ visit added to the celebration. “It’s always popular, but this is a special event for us,” she said.
The party ended with past and present camp directors Dunn and Richman holding a birthday cake as the Israeli Scouts led the crowd in singing a song that fit the occasion: “Happy Birthday.”