State FFA-FHA Camp
From 7-31-14
Our summers were always blissful as our family spent them at the FFA-FHA camp, where I was the AD for 24 summers! Our family would move to the camp, and our children could roam over the 600 acres under the watchful eyes of out staff & others. They only had to show up at mealtime, which was prepared for all of us by Mr. McAllister. (Mr. "Mac" was responsible for my early coaching raises as he had a direct pipeline to our school superintendent, Mr. "Whit" Richardson).
The McAllisters had a daughter Kay, & a son, Kenneth, (who became the physician in charge of infectious diseases of the Army). Jan & I were in San Antonio one year for the NCAA men's basketball Final Four, & Dr. McAllister took us through the Army hospital wards, and our eyes & minds were incapable of understanding all that we were seeing.
Our summer camping staff positions were highly desired, and we always had outstanding young people on our staff. FFA-FHA students came from throughout Georgia, staying for periods of 5 or 6 days, under the supervision of their teachers & our staff. Our capacity was approximately 600, with our staff providing all sorts of daily activities & competitions, & at night they were locked in a fenced area that included a large auditorium where our assemblies, dances & bands performed. Late one hot summer night, our girls' staff slipped down to the swimming lake & went "skinny-dipping", and the next day when our lifeguards saw a snake, they decided that wouldn't be a good idea any more. (Later we added a nice swimming Olympics-size swimming pool & only used the lake for fishing.) When our children reached their teen years, Brenda worked in the craft shop, & I had always heard that two should be smarter than one, and I guess that is the reason that Bob& Bill worked at the lake in our skiing/boating program while Brad worked in the hot hayfield, where our skeet & trap shooting was located! One week we had a young camper from Dublin named Karen Lord, who danced to "The Battle of New Orleans" (& made all the boys stop & stare!) No one, at that time, could have realized that this young "eaglet" would later be one of the best teachers a young person could have! I was fortunate to teach with Karen Lord Rutter for part of her 30-yr. career. Karen had no clock for the time she was willing to spend teaching young people. (If you sat in Superior Court Judge Ozburn's courtroom, you would never believe that he was, at one time, our #1 performer on our camp talent shows. He would don a dress & wig & break up our campers with his rendition of "Oh, Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes-Benz"). When you have young people on your staff like Perry Haymore, Tim Christian, Bob Richardson, Betty Jaynes, Jane Richardson, Kay "Mac", the Dickerson boys, the Bradley boys (& Brenda), and many others, you are going to have some pranks! We had some of our boys' staff to patrol the grounds at night to keep lonesome boyfriends from entering the camp. One night, the boys got the bright idea to enter the girls staff cottage & gather up all their undergarments, carry them down to the ice house, & freeze them in blocks of ice. The next morning they dumped the blocks of frozen garments on the front porch of the girls' cottage. After we threatened the staff with dismissal, we thought we had ended this caper. On Wednesday nights we always had a staff meeting. Jane R. & other girls on the staff were in charge of refreshments. This provided them a perfect way for them to get even with the boys! On my way to the softball field, I stopped at the building where the refreshments were usually placed by mid-afternoon, & sampled several pieces of fudge they had made. Before I reached the softball fields, an "explosion" took place within me! That night, the girls were overly generous as they passed out fudge to the boys staff members! During the night when the boys staff cottage ran out of toilet tissue, the guys learned what I had already figured, that the girls had put a lot of Ex-lax in the fudge! I could go on & on about why we loved summer camp, but I do want to give much credit to the camp for what our children, as well as many other youngsters, learned there that has stayed with them into adulthood and greatly enriched their lives.
