Camp Carolina Tradition

John King III, the grandfather of current camper Robert King, sent us his Camp Carolina Merit Certificates from when he was a camper in 1956.  At the bottom, he wrote, “I found these and I wanted to share them with you.  I loved my time at Camp Carolina and my two favorite activities were riflery and swimming.  I am Robert King’s grandfather.”

He was in the “Midget” tribe…back then the four tribes were called the Mites, Midgets, Juniors, and Seniors.  Now they are the Newts, Waterdogs (Dogs), Salamanders (Manders), and Mollyhuggers (Huggers).

Robert King is about the same age now as John was when he was at camp in 1956.  Robert is going to be a Waterdog this coming summer, taking part in some of the same activities that his grandfather was doing back in the ’50s.  What a cool family tradition!

I wonder if anyone else’s grandfathers are in these pictures..?

I also found JB Ernest who was Head of Riflery that year on the next page.  He’s the one who signed John King III’s certificate!  Back in the earlier years of camp we didn’t have the Old Man of the Mountain award.  The campers didn’t receive a canoe paddle as reward for their good citizenship until Nath Thompson implemented that practice for the first time in 1964 and called it the order of the Old Man of the Mountain.  I showed Nath these pictures, and although a great deal of his memory is fading at the age of 83, he and his wife Mary definitely remember A.W. Norman who was the Associate Director in ’56 in the top right of this scanned portion of the ’56 catalog.

Send an email to kylie@campcarolina.com if you’d like for us to try to find you, one of your relatives or some of your old camp buddies!  It’s always fun delving into a bit of Camp Carolina history, all 90 years of it!!  We have a lot of the old Camp Carolina catalogues, but not all of them.