Quaker Lake Characters

You have already met some of the people (David Fields, Lin Osborne, Laura Wheeler) who made my years as a camper, Counselor Assistant and staff member at QLC such a huge part of my life in some of my earlier posts. Today I want to give you a quick look at ten more of the "characters" ( in no particular order) that I will not soon forget! And there are still so many more...
10) Darrell McBane- I served "Daddy Darrell" as a CA for two years in high school, and we became good friends, hanging out on the weekends and playing pranks. I learned much about being a good camp counselor from Darrell, including how to always focus on the campers needs first. Which leads me to...
9) Becky Long- Sweet, quiet little camper who was on the softball field minding her own business when a girl doing a flip inadvertently threw a wooden heeled Dr. Shoals sandal that hit her above her eye, cutting her badly. I grabbed her bleeding head and pinned it against me so she couldn't see how much blood there was, picked her up and started to lodge for help. Someone grabbed her head, pulled it away from my blood-soaked chest, and said "let me see." The blood gushed into her eyes and she basically went into shock. She was rushed to the hospital and was fine, and we became good friends. Later she was on a New York trip as well. She was a real sweetie! Now the guy who pulled her head away...
8) Roland Pugh. One of the first friends I made at camp as a camper, and the son of a pastor, Roland was a good guy who could be a little of a know-it-all sometimes. In our mostly chaotic version of volleyball he would always quote rules from the official rule book that none of us knew or cared about. He always had to have the last word on anything medical. And to quote one of our cooks, Roland "thinks he is God's gift to women." Which brings us to...
7) Brian Jackson. The same cook finished that statement by saying "now Brian Jackson IS God's gift to women!" Brian was a star football player who was known and loved by all the campers his age. He was a great CA for me one week, and was part of the group who loved to sing The Hog Calling Song: "When it's hog calling time in Nebraska, I'll be calling my hogs over you." Brian was also a part of the best looking couple I remember from those days...
6) Leigh Ann Everhart Venable was the other half of that couple. If they had been around today, they would have one of those combo names, like "BriAnn" or "LeighBri." Leigh Ann was a part of many of my favorite early days at camp, and then was on staff my last summer. We had all kinds of fun together right up until she married one of my best friends, Terry Venable. Later, Terry came to Springfield Friends Meeting as pastor a year or so after I had left there, she and I had a simple deal- she would not tell Carl stories and I would not tell Leigh Ann stories! We will always have "our house...in the middle of the tundra!" And I can't talk abut Leigh Ann without talking about...
5) Jay Osborne. The two of them are joined in my brain for a variety of reasons, including the infamous "Empty Cabin" week. They are also there because they were such good friends to each other and to me through the tragedy of the death of Robin Davis we endured together that same summer. Jay's famous "I'm melting" line as the Tin Man in Little Theater production of The Ozzard of Wuz; his dropping my guitar off the roof of the lodge; and his admission that counselors, not lifeguards, were "where the rubber hits the road" at QLC always will keep him in my memory. Then there was also the time I tried to fix him up with...
4) Jodi Coble, AKA "Abby Normal." Jodi was a camper and staffer who just made you sick. Everything she did she did well. Painting, shooting, academics, cooking...you name it, she was good at it. Too good for Jay, apparently, because my plan failed miserably. When she was in college we took to writing each other fictitious letters, hers signed by Abby Normal and mine signed by Snide Pendergrass. Marilyn and I had a wedding certificate for all the guests to sign at our wedding, and we were surprised later on to discover that Mr. & Mrs. Snide Pendergrass had attended. Now a vet in Colorado, Jodi was one of my favorite people. The last time I saw her she was preparing to run a marathon at Disney World. Disgusting.
3) Paul Routh has absolutely no connection to Jodi that I know of, but then Paul is connected to everyone it seems. He arrived as a camper for his first week of camp and would not quit crying until I finally got his mom to leave. He stayed...and stayed...and stayed! Camper, staff member or Yearly Meeting staffer, Paul has been a huge part if QLC for a very long time, right up until today. Just think, if I had sent him home with his mom we could have avoided all of this! :)
2) Pam Farlow. (In case you follow this blog and are wondering "is everyone connected to QLC named Osborne or Farlow, the answer is "pretty much.") Pam was a counselor the summer of 1976, a summer I volunteered three weeks. She was student at UNC and I was in high school. She had a bit of a crush on my friend Carl Semmler, and I became her confidant about that and a good many other things. She had a great impact on my desire to work at camp, and though I never really was around her much after that summer, she is definitely a character I remember.
1) And #1 is...you'll have to wait until tomorrow, because this guy gets a post all to himself. But don't worry, it'll be here in a flash...


Because of Jesus,