We are seeking your favorite recollections of camp. Please take a few minutes to write down and send in one of your favorite stories of life at camp to share with other Crucis lovers.
Supermen, Bears, Eagles, Lions, and Snakes
I belonged to St. Michael's & All Angels in Dallas from the early 1950's through the early '60's. I attended 4 boy's camps in the 50's and two jr. high sessions around 1960-61. I remember that the boys were divided into the bears, lions, eagles and supermen(?). The youngest boys lived in the huts that were down from the dining hall. The next group lived across the bridge to the immediate right and the others were distributed in other huts towards the chapel. Father McElyea and his wife, Mary Beth, were regulars during those years.
A highlight of camp was to see how many snakes were killed during each 10 day session. There were crafts and archery classes, softball and swimming. You could also fish, go on hikes and ride horseback. There were bible classes, of course, and I served as an acolyte there. As best I can remember, the fee to attend was either $25 or $35 for a 10 day session. There was a "canteen" where you could buy sodas, stamps, snacks, etc. after rest period.
Those were wonderful years; seem so much simpler than what we have now but I guess that's life.
Chambers, Andy (Drew)
Rabbits on the girls' side
At the reunion Joe Riddell and I discussed one of the many funny incidents when we were counselors for the '65 Jr. High session. That was my first time to be a Camp Crucis counselor and he was my mentor. Here is a recap. Everyone remembers that the girls’ side across the bridge was off limits for the guys after the final bell at 11:00 pm or so. Joe and I and two of the girl counselors, Betsy House and Gayle Cerminaro, had been hanging out at the pool late one night after “lights out,” and then we slipped across the bridge … just being gentlemen … to escort our ladyfriends back to their cabins. We both saw movement from time to time as we looked back over our shoulders, but explained it away as “rabbits” out scurrying around…. We spent a few minutes on the girls' side before saying (and kissing?) good night and made it back to the boys’ side undetected…so we thought …. Next day, as I recall, we had to mow the grass during rest period as punishment. The rabbits were Coach Dawson's white socks!! He had been cold trailing us the whole time.
(from Kelly Riley)
An early camper with treasured memories
My first cousin, Merrill Hall, sent me your website and the nostalgic rememberances of Camp Crucis in the 40's and and 50's. I went to Camp Crucis as a camper in 1950 for the first time, I believe. I was nine years old. My family lived in Weatherford, Texas. My sister Martha Brown and I attended summer camp there for at least three years, maybe four.
Camp Crucis played a very important role in my early development. I was happiest there learning to swim, to ride horses, to interact with my counselors and the staff and to meet kids from all over Texas. Scottie McGee was my counselor two years in a row and I absolutely adored her...she taught me so much. Why she took an interest in me I will never know, but she did. After camp was over one year she invited me to come to see her in Dallas, so my mother let me take the Greyhound Bus to Dallas, where she picked me up at the station and showed me a wonderful time....my first big city experience. I will never forget sitting on the bus listening to the loudspeaker in the bus station playing.."Oh My Papa" .
My sister and I loved the outdoor chapel at the top of the hill, where we would kneel down under a canopy of trees and acknowledge how fortunate we were to be at Camp Crucis. We would pray fervently for our mother, for our family and for the opportunity to come back to Camp Crucis the following year. The camp nurse was Shirley Hall, our beloved aunt who made us feel special every time we went to the infirmary to have our throats swabbed.
We would stand in front of the dining hall and sing..."Here we sit like birds in the wilderness, birds in the wilderness, birds in the wilderness. Here we sit like birds in the wilderness, waiting for something to eat. Waiting for something to eat....waiting for something to eat. Here we sit like birds in the wilderness, waiting for something to eat."
At Camp Crucis I learned that I could control my destiny by being a good student and learning as many skills as I possibly could to make myself more competent. I went on to spend most of the summers of my childhood and teen years at summer camps...among them Camp Windywood (Alexandria, Louisiana) Camp Hartnett, (McComb, Mississippi), Camp Monterey (Monterey, California). I went on to become a counselor at Camp Monterey during the years when I was an undergraduate at Louisiana State University.
There are not enough accolades to express how much Camp Crucis meant to me...thank you for this opportunity to acknowledge the role that the Episcopal Church had in my early childhood development.
(from Sherryl Brown)
Diocese of Dallas Camping Before Camp Crucis
Just wondering if there is any interest in what the Diocese of Dallas did for its young people before the purchase of Crucis.
I was a member of Trinity in Fort Worth, and Father M. B. Sale took me and Jane Dowlen Matteson to Camp Kiwanis near Dallas where we had one session for all ages. Father Homer Rogers was one of the priests on the staff and it was a glorious week. The next year we had a session at Camp Woodlake (between Denison and Sherman), again we were all ages. Father Rogers was also on the staff there. One of the campers was Bill Burkhardt, later a priest in our diocese until moving to Arizona (and now deceased).
Not too long after that Canon Curtis Junker took me and a YPF member from Dallas out to Granbury to see the new camp site that had just been purchased. It was exciting that we would have our own place and it really looked different than it does today.
I was never a camper at Crucis, but in 1950 Jane and I were counsellors for a Junior Girls session, and our cabin (the big old double cabin across the river) won the talent night. Father Jim DeWolfe was the priest in charge.
That session it rained and rained, and on the Friday of the session we loaded up all our girls and their stuff, and everyone spent the night sleeping in the old Refectory. The flood knocked the old bridge part-way off its pillars.
Thru the years our family has had a rich history of participating at Crucis sessions. My brother, Gary Lee Hellman was very active. He was a diocesan EYC president and also a winner of the Crucis Cross. A graduate of General Seminary in New York City, he now a Pastoral Counselor and associate at St. Johns in the Village in New York. My son David Cardona also won the Crucis Cross, is a graduate of Neshota Seminary and now a Hospice Chaplain and Social Worker living in Granbury. My son John Cardona and daughter Mary Jane Cardona Lopez also enjoyed many many sessions at Crucis. We'll look for old pictures of the Camp, and hope to participate in the reunion.
(from Beverly Hellman Cardona)
An Original "Old Timer"
I attended the first session of Camp Crucis! Just being 9 years old at the time I didn't realize that it would have any particular significance. As I grew up in Dallas my family attended St. Mathew's Cathedral. Sometime during the spring of 1947 my family along with several others went to a camp site near Granbury that the church had bought and the parents worked on fixing up the cabins and doing handyman repairs while the kids played. That summer we attended Camp Crucis. It seems to me that in those days the camp sessions were two weeks and we loved every minute of it. Certainly, there was no air conditioning, fortunately we did have flush toilets and there were communal showers. The campers did some of the work such as policing the grounds and KP duty washing dishes and sweeping the mess hall after meals.
I attended Camp Crucis several years until my family moved away, sometimes going to more than one session in a summer. I will dig through some of those boxes to see if I can find any pictures to send, there may be a letter home or two stashed away someplace.
Camp Crucis will always have a special place in my heart, some of my fondest memories are from my experiences there.
After living overseas and all over the United States, I am happy to be back in Plano, Texas, and see my grandchildren who go to St. Vincent's in Bedford going to Camp Crucis. (I don't think they have nearly as much fun as I did, though!)
(from Mildred Thompson Kirkwood)
Bishop William Paul Barnds - namesake of the Camp Crucis Crafts Pavilion
I first knew him as Father Barnds, when he was rector in the 1950's of my home parish, Trinity in Forth Worth. He was a very proper and humble priest. Back then the Diocese of Dallas included what is now the Diocese of Fort Worth -- quite a large territory. Father Barnds was chosen in the 1960's to be a suffragan bishop (an assistant bishop not having the right of succession) to help out Diocesan Bishop C. Avery Mason, who was not in good health. One of his primary tasks was to go to parishes for confirmations, etc. He was then a senior citizen and had definitely NEVER projected a flashy image, but after he was chosen Suffragan Bishop, he picked a roadrunner as the symbol on his bishop's ring, and he bought a red (the color for the Holy Spirit) Thunderbird (then a very sporty car) to make his rounds. One other trivia bit: He confided once to my father that he carried, tucked away in his priest's garb, a $100 bill so that he could provide immediate assistance if the situation arose. (That $100 would be more like $1000 today.) (from Joe Riddell)
The "New" Bridge (2007 photo)
The current bridge was built in time for the summer of 1958 to replace an older pair of bridges that were washed away by a flood in the spring of 1957. The pair of bridges spanned Stroud's Creek via an island a little upstream from the current bridge. The 1957 flood left behind on the island a large (4 or 5 feet high and several feet across) concrete support that held up the ends of the two spans. Over the years, the concrete support had slumped eastward. The flood of June 2007 finally tumped the support into Stroud's Creek, from which it barely sticks up just east of the island.
During the summer of 1957, campers crossed the creek via a couple of short wooden walkways in the area below the pond that's immediately downstream from the dam. Still visible today is a cut in the cliff behind the crafts pavilion for the path leading down to the wooden spans.
The new bridge was designed by the engineering firm of Llewellyn Powell (a parishioner of Incarnation in Dallas). The firm had earlier designed the impressive and graceful Hampton Road bridge over what was then the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike, later known as I-30 (and now also as Tom Landry Highway) west of Downtown Dallas. His daughter Sally Powell was a camper and counselor and received the Crucis Cross at Senior Conference in 1962.
(from Joe Riddell)
