Alumni Testimonials

Herbert Alan Leeds, '31-'32
New York

My CRS Coincidental Experiences

My life has been so filled with coincidental events that I sometimes believed they could not have been unplanned.  The first in a 50 year span of CRS contacts began on my very first day at CRS.

Coincidence 1 - John Cornehlsen & Roland B. Sundown

I had attended Camp Henry; operated by the Henry Street Settlement,  for two weeks per summer for a number of years and in 1933 was a junior counselor there.  Among Camp Henry’s counselors were two outstanding persons who contributed greatly to its high quality governance and activities, John Cornehlsen and Roland B. Sundown, both Dartmouth students when I first knew them.

Imagine my delightful surprise when I arrived at CRS and both were there, John as camp director and Sunny as nature counselor.  As the sole camper who knew them I was prepared for their style, their affinity for  traditional American-Indian structure, dividing camp into tribes with sachem leaders and an award system enabling us to earn colored feathers for our headdress descriptive of particular achievement areas.

Click here to read more of "My CRS Coincidental Experiences" by Herbert Alan Leeds.

Klil Karmon, '01, '10
Israel

I celebrated my fifteenth birthday at Camp Rising Sun in the summer of 2001. Returning to Israel at the end of the summer I felt something that not many fifteen year-old teenagers feel:  I felt that I took part in something bigger, something that would affect me in the future, even though I didn't know in what way.  I returned to Israel as teenager who knew 59 other teenagers from all over the world.  I returned as a kid who knew that it was possible for young people to lead themselves, and others, and make a difference.   I learned to hear and accept other opinions, but also to argue with them in a mature way and to stand my ground when needed.  I felt comfortable asking questions, exploring and developing my own opinions and way of life. 

When I left camp in 2001, I knew I would come back to camp one day.  That day came in the summer of 2010 when I returned as a counselor.   For the second time in my life, I took part in a special experience that affected me. One of my reasons for going back to camp was to help me decide about my future.   I wanted to begin my higher education but wasn't sure exactly in what direction I wished to go.   After spending the summer with the teenagers and the other amazing staff members, I knew. I decided to overcome my fears and follow my heart. Now, I'm starting my degree in education with a dream to the future of becoming a high school principal in Israel.   I hope to give back from what I learned in camp and make a difference in the lives of other teenagers.

David Strand, '72, '76
San Francisco

Camp Rising Sun—A Season of Firsts

This coming year will mark the 40^th anniversary of the summer I spent at Camp Rising Sun.  Some of my recollections of that summer have faded with time, but others are so fresh in my mind it seems like I was there just yesterday.

Camp Rising Sun was a season of firsts for me.  A season where I was introduced to the world around me and the world inside me—and what it and I could offer to each other. 

At Camp that summer of 1972, I attended my first classical music concert. Listened to my first opera.  Became friends with the first African American I had ever known.  Played my first game of chess.  Met not just one, but thirty, boys from other countries.  Discovered the mirth of Gilbert and Sullivan.  Met my first academic dean of a major university.  Experienced my first opportunity to lead. Took time for reflection.  Learned the value of curiosity.  Sang and laughed louder and longer than I ever had and forged stronger bonds than anything I had ever experienced. I even learned, somewhat to my chagrin, that the college named after the road running by camp was “Tulane” (one of Freddie’s unfortunate favorite puns)!  But most of all, I began to dream of a life and a world far different than anything I had ever imagined. 

Recently, the staff at Camp Rising Sun returned to me my original camp application.  Attached to it was a picture of me taken on the day I was interviewed by Freddie some 40 years ago.  As I look at that picture now, I see a nervous, apprehensive and somewhat timid boy who had not yet discovered the world…who had not yet looked inside to see what and who was there…who had not yet been challenged to think about what he could be and what he could give back to the world.  That boy did not come back from Camp that summer.  That boy was left behind somewhere near the Sawkill in upper state New York.  The boy who did return was a boy whose world would never be the same.  A boy who had been exposed to the world and all the possibilities it had to offer.  A boy who was challenged to think about how the gifts he was given could make a difference in the lives of others and who, over that summer, gained the confidence to use them.

When I returned to Camp in 1976 as a counselor, Freddie would occasionally invite me up to his room in the Old House.  We would talk about Camp and about life late into the night.  He worried a lot about whether the summer was going to turn out to be a successful one and what “success” at Camp meant to him.  Over the course of that summer, I realized just how purposefully he had constructed our experience at Camp Rising Sun.  I realized then that my season of firsts was no accident, but was planned and deliberate and was the result of a lifetime of commitment to each and every boy who had the good fortune to go to Camp. 

I have thought a lot about Camp in recent years.  I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m just getting older or, more likely, I’m just now coming to understand the real and continued importance of Camp in my life.  But, whatever the reason, I find myself wanting to be a bigger part of insuring that other boys and girls had the experience I had. I want to insure that other boys and girls have their own “season of firsts.”

Gbenga Akinlabi, '90
Nigeria

Camp Rising Sun is a place where young people between the ages of 14 and 16 have the unreserved opportunity to exhibit and discover what they are made of, enhance their personal leadership/creative qualities/potentials, and mingle freely with diverse people from all over the world. Though living with about seventy strange people sounds like an impossible atmosphere in which to discover oneself, the actual unfolding of events reveals how gradual and fulfilling the building/development of self, friendship, and understanding can be. Camp affords the once in a lifetime opportunity to realize that men are, more or less, the same; bound by the same primary urge of basic necessities, such as food, shelter, and most of all, love. If only we could, we would make it mandatory that all youth must attend Camp Rising Sun Summer program!

Samantha Keena, '92 '93
New York, NY

I didn't know what I was getting into when I 'reported' to camp in June of 1995. I was a cynical kid from Brooklyn, recommended for the initial camp interview by a teacher at Stuyvesant High School. I went into Camp Rising Sun resistant to emotionalism and "opening up". I left with memories which would last a lifetime, memories of 51 very special girls from around the world and the realization that not only had I allowed myself to become a sister to these girls, but that I could never have even stopped myself had I wanted to.

I returned to Camp the next summer as a second-year camper, and I tried to pass on the wonder that I had discovered in this amazing place to a whole new bunch of young women, as it had been entrusted to me. The way I saw different cultures and heard about the experiences of other young women from around the world shocked me; not only by contrasting so many other ways of life with my own American/New Yorker one, but also by realizing how much I had in common with these girls, despite the separation in our lives and countries.

My camp experiences brought me into contact with people who have remained some of my closest friends to this day. I may not be able to really ever explain just why Rising Sun is so important to me, but I know that making the decision to go there in 1992 is one of the best decisions that I have made, and my sincere hope is that campers in the future will perpetually be able to experience the love and wonder I discovered there.