The Real Hello, Muddah...
As readers of these pages know, I have great affection for the summer camp I went to -- Camp Nebagamon in Lake Nebagamon, Wisconsin. In fairness, it's not the case of going away for a few summers. Rather, I began going as a pre-school kid to family camp. Then, when my dad was camp doctor for four years as Doctor's Son (the official title), and later a camper and eventually counselor. A very long time. So, it's not just some fond summer memories, but a major part of my life. But then, the camp has been around a long time itself -- 91 years.
(I have a friend who will bring up his own summer camp in Wisconsin, so relentlessly and glowingly that it makes me look mute. Every once in a while, when he gets to the point where you sense he's about to insist that no other summer camp in the world worth noting exists or has ever existed since time began or will exist into eternity, I politely mention to him that the fellow who ran the camp he loves so much actually went to...Camp Nebagamon.)
Over the near-century, they've had a lot of famous people who went there, most notably the Broadway composer John Kander (Cabaret, Chicago), Oscar-winning screenwriter William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride and All the President's Men) and his brother also Oscar-winner James Goldman (The Lion in Winter, the musical Follies with Stephen Sondheim.) Lots of others, though I'll just add Jason Kander (great-nephew of...) who was Secretary of State of Missouri, and who I've referenced here periodically as a growing voice in the young wing of the Democratic Party.
Fun, too, is that the camp song, "Thanks for the Pines" was written the husband-and-wife couple Gus and Grace Kahn, both professional songwriters, and among his credits are "It Had to Be You," "Dream a Little Dream of Me," "Makin' Whoopee," "Carolina in the Morning, "I'll See You in My Dreams," "Yes, Sir, That's My Baby,"...and a LOT more. (The 1951 movie, I'll See You in My Dreams was a biopic about the Kahns, starring Danny Thomas and Doris Day.) For those who care about such things, I wrote here the fun story how the camp song came about, and how decades later I got to sing the song to then 90+ year-old Grace.
I mention all this as backdrop about another Camp Nebagamon alum I just found out about. No, not at that level, though fairly popular these days, TV host Andy Cohen. And this came about because of a video I found where he's a guest on Stephen Colbert's show and reads from a bunch of letters he wrote him when he was going to Camp Nebagamon -- all of which his mother saved. It's pretty darn funny.
And as a bonus, here is a photo of an alumni reunion a few years ago, and there he is, returning to the North Woods as an adult -- clearly not hating the camp, as he notes in one of the letters -- sitting in the front row, all the way on the far right, in a green shirt.
UPDATE: I was going to delete this photo, but leaving it up allows me to post a response from the current camp director Adam Kaplan, who responded to a Facebook discussion. It was in reference to camp alum trying to figure out the year of the photo, figuring it was a while back, since Andy Cohen doesn't look quite the same as he does now. What Adam wrote was --
"To be clear, while I am not sure what year the photo is from, it is clearly from the last 5(ish) years.....And the reason you don't recognize the TV Andy Cohen in it is because the guy in the green shirt is indeed Andy Cohen. But a different Andy Cohen who has been a wonderful staff member for quite a few years. The TV Andy did come visit camp in the late around 2009 and did a very cool Trails Forward for the kids. He indeed did not hate camp and has been a terrific friend to camp....As a cool side note, the TV Andy Cohen met the green shirted Andy Cohen during his visit and the two went sailing together!"
Side note: "Trails Forward" is a program during the camp season when a former camper or counselor returns for a day or two and gives talks about what they've gone on to do in the world and makes himself available to the kids throughout the camp.
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