Patch Blog: Dadmissions on The Summer of 1990

My father died in March 1990 on the Ides of March.. the 15th. I was 14 years old and can still remember the sirens I heard in town as I shot hoops on the old basketball rim down the street. His banana-colored car with brown 1970's trim was in a crash with a big rig on South Main Street in Sharon, MA. Our family dentist lived right there and was actually the... first responder trying to perform CPR on his patient, my father. It was the day my life changed forever.

Once you get over the shock, the funeral, the lowering of a casket into the ground, at some point you start to pick up the pieces. It was the last couple of months of freshman year in high school and summer camp was fast approaching. I had gone to overnight camp for the past two years and had loved it, but this year was different. Mom was home. Money was a crunch. At first I told her I'd skip overnight camp altogether. But she knew it was best for me to carry on and do what I had planned on doing as opposed to sulking at home all summer. The money was a big issue though, so she and the camp found a way to put me to work instead.

At 14 years old, I joined the staff of Camp Yavneh in Northwood, New Hampshire. The deal seemed simple- I'd work on the maintenance crew and still get to do what some of the other regular campers did. I was underage so I still needed to sleep in a bunk with kids my age and have a counselor who kept an eye on me. But I was actually on the staff working for my stay. Each day, as kids went off to the day's activities, I reported to the maintenance shed instead. I was working. First chore of the day was cleaning restrooms across the camp; scrub the toilets, load new paper and towels, and move on to the next spot, scrub the toilets, load new paper and towels, and move on to the next spot. At one point during the summer, I remember there was a kid who kept having accidents on the way to the bathroom. We actually set up a sting, my maintenance friend and I, and we caught the kid in the act of not making it to the stall again, and made him help clean it up. Revenge was sweet at 14.

The guy I reported to everyday was Doug. He was a crotchety, old guy with a leathered face and worn ball cap. He was a "townie" which meant he'd been in Northwood his whole life and wasn't going anywhere. Doug's wife had died not too long ago, and the camp was the only other family he had. Doug would take me out of camp in the black jeep to load up on supplies at his houses. I say houses because he had one ranch house he lived in, and then right next door he had another ranch house for his tools, his guns, and his maintenance equipment he'd gathered over decades. Doug was a quiet guy, but an intimidating guy, with a very "Don't screw with me" attitude. And even though we never spoke about his wife, or my life, during the summer somehow we found some common ground.

Every Tuesday was trip day. As other kids packed their bags for the beach or a water park, my friend Gene and I would grab the brooms and dust pans to start the cleaning list for the day. We'd need to clean the those bathrooms again, mop the floors of the big camp halls and help Doug with whatever he needed. If we got the cleaning done on time, then we too could go on the trip. Since I was also on the staff, I got a regularly scheduled day off.. from camp. One week, I grabbed the coach bus from New Hampshire to Boston and came home to see my mom for the day. The other kids were still in camp. I was riding the bus by myself a few hours away and it was all good as long as I reported back to camp on time.

All along the way, I see it now, there were signs that I was still just 14 years old. I nearly lost my job in August when the camp director found out we had made a game out of trying to steal ice cream sandwiches from the mess hall refrigerators. But she gave me a reprieve when she realized her own son who ran the mess hall was in on the game. And I remember clear as day liking a girl at camp that summer. My friend liked the same girl. So we solved it the only way two young teenagers could. We played a game of "horse" to see who would get to ask her out first. I lost. He asked first. She turned us both down anyway.

In the end, it was a long summer. It was a tough summer. And it was very, very different from the normal camp experience. I went back to my hometown knowing things weren't the same, but having gotten my first taste of what it was really like to make sacrifices and to work for what I wanted. Not too long ago, I heard that old, crotchety Doug had taken his own life. I don't think he could take the loneliness anymore after his wife's death. It turns out, during that one summer, we had an unlikely bond. It was the summer I grew up. The summer without my dad for the first time. The summer of 1990.