Getting Back to the Basics in Cabin 19: A Board President’s Cabin Chronicles

In the Words of Graeme Noseworthy, Board President, Takodah YMCA

Community always takes center stage at YMCA Camp Takodah. From the cabin to the Division, and from the classes to the evening programs, there’s always so many ways for campers and staff alike to connect with each other and work towards developing their full potential. My experience leading in the Buffalo Division during Session 2 this year was no exception.

Each summer, I volunteer for two weeks as a cabin leader and swim instructor. This not only gives me a chance to directly support our mission, but it also helps me to get embedded in the operation so I can better understand it and subsequently support it with the help of the Board and our committees, in the offseason. Personally, I have a ton of fun and anyone who sees me at camp knows this is true. It’s really that simple. Even with all of the challenges that come along, I find that each time I‘m lucky enough to lead and teach fills me with more love for Takodah than I ever had before. This year, I co-led with Kaleb, a wonderful Takodian who I have known for a long time. He and I had a great group of campers join us in Cabin 19, the same cabin where I began my volunteering journey in 2011 with legendary leaders Billy Jarvis and Peter DeMoya. We all clicked right away, enjoyed our cabin activities, told stories each night, settled conflicts as a team, and made the most of each moment we had in South Camp. To be honest, as I sit here in my home office wrapping up a day of intense corporate meetings, I miss the hubbub of ol’ 19. In and around the cabin, we could get back to the basics of what makes camp important for us all: friendships being formed, lessons being learned, challenges being met, songs being sung, and beyond.

One of the biggest lessons learned this year was around a breakthrough we had with a homesick camper. While most of his tears came at night when he was tired, I found that he was frequently focused on when he was scheduled to go home. After talking with him, we quickly realized that he was concentrating on the wrong thing. We discovered that he loved his sailing class at the Waterfront. So, instead of being focused on “twelve days until you can go home,” we focused on “12 hours until the next sailing class.” That worked! It was such a small and simple solution, but it worked! It’s those little wins that really make a difference. It’s the camper that tries something new. The conflict that gets resolved. The tears that make way for a smile. The ask to go home that turns into an ask to go have fun. The activity that doesn’t go as expected but turns out great. The moment you and your co-leader know you’ve done something special. The ways in which we all leave our mark on Takodah’s remarkable history.

When I am volunteering as a staff member, I am always open to learning from those who I get to work with. I try very hard to act as a peer, even though I am not only the Board President, I am also considerably older than the rest of the staff. But none of that matters. I constantly learn – both personal and professional lessons – from the directors, the ad staff, the division heads, the program staff, the waterfront staff, the nurses, and especially the campers. In fact, this year I was given my first ever “talent talk” and I found both of them to be super informative and helpful. After all, we’re not only helping campers to have a great experience, we’re also developing employees who can go out and be good contributors and managers for their own organizations and communities.

Finally, there’s the overall impact on me. I always come home from these sessions full of ideas, emotions, memories, songs, and, yes, a fair bit of exhaustion. And yet, I know that tired feeling I have is directly tied to a sense of very real accomplishment. My campers had a blast, tried lots of new things, and made some new friends, my swim students advanced their craft and gained confidence in Cass Pond, and Kaleb and I went from being “friendly to all” to “family to each other.”

That is the power of community. That is the spirit of Takodah. As Billy Jarvis used to say, “that’s what we do here.”

P.S. To read more about the incredible legacy of Bill Jarvis, check out this blog post from 2022.