[ Camp co-founder Gerry Bucky died in July 2002. ]

By Alan Stamm

May 9, 2002

I’m pleased to report that our beloved ‘Uncle’ Gerry is in fine health, spirits and alertness … and flattered to know we take these occasional e-strolls down Memory Lane (aka Sheldon Road ).

When I flew west for my mom’s 85^th birthday last weekend, my brother Ron and I also traveled back in time over lunch with 3 Buckys – Gerry, Steve and Marilyn. Two snapshots are attached. (My mom and the Buckys were Inwood neighbors in Upper Manhattan a half-century ago and now live in adjacent counties on the opposite coast – a cool bit of continuity.)

Encouraged by a call from Gerry last October, I contacted Steve to arrange a get-together. His family generously hosted our lunch at a restaurant near Gerry’s home in Rancho Bernardo, near Marilyn and Steve’s in Scripps Ranch ( San Diego area).

 His tanned, trim son -- a psychologist-educator -- swims most days at a community pool and plays softball with his boys every weekend. "This is summer camp," Steve said on a brilliant, cloudless Sunday.

  The former Marilyn Grossman, with traces of Brooklyn in her voice, stays in close touch with older brother Jerry, a Florida retiree, whom she sees 3 or 4 times a year and speaks to every few days. She recalls, but harbors no grudge about, undergarment-swiping raids on her bunk – and extracted a confession that I was among the perpetrators.  

  For an hour over seafood and steaks at a window-side booth, reminiscences flowed effortlessly and effusively from memories as bright as the crystal-clear sky outside.

 Gerry is sharp, witty and precise in his recall of the summer retreat he and Ellen created at the urging of parents who patronized their Stern Nursery School opposite Fort Tryon Park ’s northern edge. Ellen started that business with her first husband, using their last name. We learned that Gerry actually met her when he enrolled his first son at the preschool, which served the area’s large postwar community of German-Jewish immigrants.  

  Ellen had been an early childhood educator in Germany , where she ran a kindergarten and Gerry directed a professional theater company after earning a music education doctorate in Switzerland . "But Germany kicked us out," he recalled with understatement, so they built new lives in New York City (separately at first).

 After they married and ran the nursery school in a lobby-level apartment at 1803 Riverside Drive , where they also had an apartment, they scouted for property in the Catskills and opened you-know-what in 1948 . . . with only the main building at first.

  "Both parents (of our pupils) usually worked, since they were new refugees without much money, and they needed something to do with the children during summer," Gerry explained. "So we waited until Steve was 2 and opened the camp."

 Local contractors added bunk houses, the infirmary and the hilltop pool as enrollment grew, and water safety instructor Paul Sarkesian did pre-summer duty with a cement mixer to pour the tennis court and build a miniature golf course.

 Steve estimates that 99 percent of campers were Jewish, while his dad recalls more than a handful of gentile youngsters. "That’s why I hesitated to start Friday services at first." Both agreed that virtually all campers’ parents were European immigrants.

 In effect, Gerry was creative director and Ellen was the businesswoman and marketing-minded image shaper. "Policing the grounds" for cigarette butts "must have been my mother’s idea," Steve said. (We marveled at how smoking regular cigarettes was the apparent extent of camper or counselor vices in those wonder years.)

 We also savored moonlit visions of Friday night socials, slow-dancing to scratchy 45s. "Those are still the best songs on the radio," insisted Steve, whose partner back then was Elyce Wakeman – a fellow Southern Californian whom he recently tracked down for a phone chat.

  Marilyn recalls hitching with other counselors to the Colony Restaurant in Pine Bush on days off . . . and was the only one at our table who still has a blue-and-white camp T-shirt . ("It would fit our granddaughter.")

 The Buckys decided to float candles on the pool for the last time in ’65 "because we got tired of all the work," Gerry said 37 years after that August when we had seen him last.

 What a genuine thrill it was to tell him how much those summers and his nurturing environment meant, and how the values, skills, esteem and Broadway lyrics are lasting a lifetime. "I’m glad we succeeded at what we tried to do," he said simply.

 And then, after outdoor photo-snapping, Gerry was driven home for afternoon rest hour . . . at about the time when the youngest campers would take a break from our frolics. The thread from then to now is as strong as Gerry’s, Steve’s and Marilyn’s handshakes, especially now that our meeting has bridged the decades.

* * *

  "Gerry was part of the fabric of so many of our childhoods.  I don't think there's an SSC alumni alive that doesn't smile at the thought of him.  Marilyn says he was his usual charming and gentle self until the very end."