August 19, 2017 --

The last week of he Wabigoon season started on the 19th of August. (In 1955 that was the day of the tragedy of the Winsted flood, caused by Hurricane Diane, which followed Hurricane Carol less than a week later.

The rampaging Still and Mad Rivers took the lives of seven Winsted residents in a city of 8,000. Google "Images of the 1955 Winsted flood" to have a sense of the flood's terrible impact on Winsted.)

After seven weeks, Color War was over, and also the "Big Show" performed by the seniors at Camp Wabigoon and Camp Wahanda (girls), and the inter-camp games, and the socials, and movies at Winsted's Strand, and overnight hikes to People's State Forest and trips to Winsted, and Torrington, and Tanglewood, and even the Shakespeare Festival in Stratford (no longer).

I don't think there is a spot on earth with fresher air than we had on Smith Hill above Winsted. (This location protected the camps from the ravages of the 1955 flood.) And the incredible star-filled night sky.

The last week of camp was kind of a winding-down process towards our return to the steamy New York metropolitan area.

The senior prom would be held on the 23rd; the awards banquet on the 24th, the trip home on the 26th -- and with memories, of bunk life, and mess hall meals, and sports, swimming on our part of Rowley's Pond, arts and crafts, dramatics, Spell It Out in the Wabigoon rec hall, Uncle Murray's sermons at the Friday night services in the Wahanda rec hall, Sunday night movies, and so much more, to last a lifetime.

Thank you camp directors Phil and Gladys Brandstein, and head counselors Rusty Grant and Millie Klotz -- and mom and dad for sending me to Wabigoon, from 1947 to 1961 -- and thanks, too, to Winsted, for being so welcoming to us.