Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 21, 1994 TAG: 9407290035
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MEGAN SCHNABEL STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Just hunker down on the crumbling edge of the stone fire pit, turn off your flashlight and listen.
" ... and as he turned the corner, the noises got louder. Thump. Thump. Scra-a-ape. Thump. Thump. Scra-a-ape ... ''
Listen. You hear it, don't you?
The echoes of campfires past may be products of dark nights and overactive imaginations, but the memories of Camp Roanoke summers are real; they remain as thick and as vigorous as the vines that choke the footpaths once trampled clean by scores of boy-sized hiking boots.
"Whenever we get together, that's all we talk about: football or Camp Roanoke," said former camper Sam Oakey, president of Oakey Funeral Service.
The suns of 40-odd summers have risen and set since Oakey and his campmates last slept in the cabins at the YMCA's Camp Roanoke; the camp itself was locked up in the mid-1980s when the land was sold to Roanoke County.
But now the creeping vines are retreating and the boots returning as the county sets its sights on reopening the camp for a new batch of storytellers.
Set back into the hilly woods of western Roanoke County, miles from the bustle of civilization, Camp Roanoke opened its gates in 1925 as a summer camp for local boys. Even in its heyday - during the 1940s and 1950s - it was a far cry from the posh summer camps of recent years. The pool was filled with ice-cold spring water. The food was plain. The latrines were dark.
In other words, it was everything summer camp was supposed to be.
"We didn't have Smith Mountain Lake, we didn't have all these parks and recreational facilities," Oakey said. "Camp was all we had."
And it was enough.
"We had a wonderful time," said fellow camper Gene Ware, now retired from the Air Force and living in Roanoke. "It was just a great time to be a kid. We didn't have any of the problems we have today."
In the absence of electricity - and the accompanying televisions and radios - the boys spent their summer days competing with campers from other cabins in games like baseball and archery and water boiling.
Water boiling? So it was a roughing-it camp, fine. No radios, no fancy sports equipment. But water boiling contests?
Yes, and they were quite popular, Ware said.
Each team of campers got a gallon of water in a bucket and raced to see who could rig up a spit and get the water boiling first. The winners scored candy bars.
The icy camp pool was a popular spot to cool off after hot afternoons of hiking (and boiling water). And with its high diving board, the pool lured the camp daredevils - some not quite so brave as they imagined, Oakey said.
For there was an unwritten, unbending rule at the Camp Roanoke pool: Once you were on the high diving board, the only way down was to jump. Plead all you wanted, but there was just no retreating down the ladder.
"I've seen kids sit up there for an hour, crying," Oakey remembered. "You feel so bad for them, but it was an accepted fact."
The rule sounds harsh, but it existed for the boys' own good, Oakey said: A camper once had been injured when he chickened out on the diving board and then fell trying to back down the ladder.
Nighttime activities often centered around that fire pit, where counselors told stories of ghosts and Indians to wide-eyed campers clutching their flashlights for dear life.
In a camp with no electricity, those flashlights were the boys' best friends.
"A flashlight was a necessity," Oakey said. "You could leave your underpants and your toothbrush at home, but you needed that flashlight."
And just try getting to the latrines after dark without a flashlight. Forbidding enough during daylight hours, the outdoor privies were downright threatening at night.
As the cabins had been named after Indian tribes, the beloved latrine was named after, well ...
"We called it `KYBO,'" Ware said with a snicker. "`Keep your bowels open.'"
As might be expected from a camp that offered primitive bathroom facilities and water-boiling contests, campers were expected to do their share of the work, Oakey said. They cleaned the kerosene lamps, waited tables in the mess hall, kept their cabins spotless.
"That was just an accepted fact," Oakey said. "You paid your money to go to camp, but you also did work."
The counselors, unpaid high school kids from around the valley, were the drill sergeants who made sure campers didn't slack off. After spending two summers as a camper, Oakey was a counselor for another two years, when he was 15 and 16.
"Being a counselor was much more rewarding to me," Oakey said. "We all stuck together. We knew we were responsible for the kids."
Of course, with the camp so far from civilization, it was tough for the youngsters to get into too much trouble. About the worst they could do was split a six-pack of beer - and even that required a lot of planning and an older friend to buy the contraband and sneak it into camp.
The remoteness of the camp also meant the counselors had to be pretty creative if they wanted to have some fun. Typically, they'd sneak out en masse after the campers were in bed and walk the two and a half miles to the nearest country store, where they'd buy Cokes and chips, Ware recalled. The group would get back to camp around midnight, with the camp director none the wiser. Or so they thought then.
"Oh, he knew," Ware said. "He just didn't care."
The years of disuse have taken their toll on the old camp. Even the dirt driveway that connects the campsite to Dry Hollow Road reflects the neglect; it is a rolling mountain range of a road untouched by a grader's blade.
The camp itself continues the theme. Cabins look out on the world through vacant windows. The swimming pool is empty save for a few puddles of stagnant water and an overturned lifeguard's chair.
"We started in pretty rough circumstances up here," said Pete Haislip, director of the Roanoke County Department of Parks and Recreation. He surveyed the cabins, the mess hall, the pool. "But things are coming along."
The county acquired the camp as part of its Spring Hill Reservoir property deal. Although the buyers originally had been interested in purchasing less than a quarter of the 110-acre camp, the YMCA executive board opted to sell the entire property and close the camp.
The Roanoke board was not alone in its decision to get out of the camp business, said Cal Johnson, YMCA executive director. Summer camps were becoming upscale, theme-oriented resorts, making it difficult for traditional roughing-it facilities - with their simple activities and shoestring budgets - to compete.
"People don't make ashtrays anymore," Johnson said. "It's a little more sophisticated."
In response, camps nationwide first abandoned residential programs and then began to close their gates altogether. Camp Roanoke, too, was a days-only camp for its last years of operation; eventually even that had to end.
When Roanoke County took over the YMCA property, the camp remained dormant while county resources were poured into the reservoir project. Only recently, with the reservoir project under control, has the county been able to turn its attention to Camp Roanoke.
The appointment several years ago of Rick Showalter as the county's full-time Camp Roanoke project coordinator has placed further emphasis on getting the camp back into use.
As the main force behind renovation and fund-raising for the camp, Showalter has taken on a formidable task. The cabins must be made habitable, the bathroom facilities brought up to current health and accessibility standards, the electrical system rewired according to modern safety codes.
The county has devoted some money to the camp renovation and, through Showalter, will continue to coordinate the project, Haislip said. But the parks and recreation department is counting on assistance from the community to get the job done.
To that end, the next few months will bring increased publicity and fund-raising efforts as the county tries to build support among camp alumni and the general public.
Volunteers already have been stepping forward in small but devoted numbers. Lynn Ricker from Salem and Ted Susac from Roanoke County joined the project in January and together have logged 400 hours reroofing the old mess hall.
"We more or less took on this building as our project," said Ricker, pointing out the new sloped roof he and Susac built to replace the building's deteriorating flattop.
Former Little League coach Ricker said he wanted to do something to help local kids, and volunteering at the camp seemed a good way to contribute.
"I'd built some houses, and Ted's a perfectionist," he said, throwing a sideways glance at his partner. "So between the two of us, we didn't do too bad."
Several Eagle Scout candidates also have tackled neglected buildings as final scouting projects, Showalter said. Jason Arrington of Roanoke took on one of the cabins and, with the help of fellow scouts and family friends, turned it from a forlorn shell back into a respectable dwelling with a new paint job, wiring and windows.
"Without the help from the community, we wouldn't be at the level we are," Showalter said.
Weather and the community permitting, the county plans to have Camp Roanoke ready for an invasion of Valley kids by next summer.
Plans for the grand reopening summer are modest, limited to several day-only Drug Abuse Resistance Education - DARE - camps for rising area seventh graders.
As Camp Roanoke slowly returns to its full potential, it will begin to host teacher retreats, school field trips, residential camps for kids and families. Perhaps one day it will operate in conjunction with the reservoir; maybe the adjoining properties can share hiking trails or canoeing and fishing facilities, Haislip said.
All that is future-tense. For now, there are trails to be cleared and windows to be repaired. A new swimming pool must be sited and built, an old water system revamped.
But optimism remains the rule at Camp Roanoke.
"This is quite a good facility," said volunteer Susac, slapping the wall of the mess hall. "It's basically sound."
Sitting in a comfortable office on a sunny July day, 59-year-old Sam Oakey still hears the campfire stories of more than 40 years ago.
"You talk about ghost stories scaring those little kids," he said with a chuckle. "They had some great ghost stories."
by CNB