10-A
The Pocono
Pocono Record, The
Pa. — bat.,
Sat., June a,
21,1975
The
The Stroudsburgs, Pa.
ia/3 .
Blue Mountain Camp - fun, games and philosophy
the children of just the
wealthy. •
"My father was a very
peaceful person and that- is
why he was a very strong
camp person," his daughter,
Martha Lubeck, said. "He felt
that all efforts and money
could be developed so much
more for children than for
war.".
After years of success at
Blue Mountains Camps, Escoll
bought Shawnee Lake Camp.
In 1949, he offered to turn it
over to a Philadelphia Quaker
group to be used as a "sum-,
mer camp combined with an
all-year peace institute." The
American Friends group was
not organized to handle out of
town property, according to
Escoli, so they declined the
offer. The quest for peace and
the development of children
were somehow always linked
in Escoll's mind.
"Above all, children will help
us to regain our appreciation
for human life,',' restoring "a
conviction that life is sacred"
and accomplishing Jhis through
"their own spontaneous love of
life, a love which finds its best
expression during a stay at a
good summer camp," Escoll
wrote. (
Children grew up attending
By JOE RATTMAN
Pocono Record Reporter
EAST STROUDSBURG 'Brushy Mountain was a wilderness area when Morris and
Bertha Escoll drove with • a
real estate agent up a road
"all ruts and mud," now Rte.
447, in'1923. The young camp
managers were looking for
land to start their own camp at
a time when a few camps scattered throughout the Northeast
comprised the whole young
camp industry in America.
Much of the land was
swampy and a small lake on
.the,, property was littered with
tree stumps. The shore around
the lake was mucky but a virgin stand of evergreen trees
stood oh much of the land that
had not been cleared for farming. .
"Although the lake was a
mass of stumps the surroundings were very beautiful,"
Mrs. Escoll recalled. She took
her husband aside and whispered to him that the property
was the one that they were
looking for. Morris borrowed
money from his sister and obtained a mortgage from a local
bank.
Local farmers doubted the
wisdom of trying to transform
the marshland into a beautiful
m o u n t a i n r e t r e a t . They
warned that horse;s hoofs
would get caught in the mire
'Tffiti that oxen would be needed
for the job of scooping away
the muck and pulling the
stumps out with aid of a wench
and pulley.
Escoll followed the advice,
also using horses with a
lumber wagon to haul away
the brush, creating a 40-acre
lake, and building athletic
playing fields besides buildings
with bunks for the children.
The property overlooked the
Stroudsburgs and the blue tinted mountains forming the Delaware Water Gap beyond so
what was once the Monroe
County Fishing Club was renamed Blue Mountain Camp..
While both teaching school in.
Doylestown, the Escolls heard
of the early New England
camps founded around the turn
of the century. They immedi.-ately stirred our imagination,"
Morris wrote years later.
They watched newspaper
ads and were interviewed by
camp owners seeking camp
counselors and directors. After
turning down camp job offers
in Maine and New York, they
finally found what they wanted.
"We saw an ad in the New
York Times," Bertha said. It
offered for rent a run down
camp in the eastern Poconos.
Realizing their opportunity.
they rented the small boy's
camp, known as Blue Ridge
camp (and located on the site
of what is now Blue Ridge
" Family Resort), and began a
41-year career in the business.
Blue Ridge Camp was very
small, -the children lived in
tents that sometimes blew
dcgn and illnesses were frequent among the. children,
Some caught pneumonia and
had to be taken to the small
hospital in East Stroudsburg.
Though dissatisfied by these
circumstances, the Escoll?
wanted to expand and open a
?^mm?^7^: selors. Escoll put together a
'fj£'i '-'."'.'•'- -....'V", - ' L- "'':' , •,
'...-.'
manual of instruction for counBoys make for dining hall after flag-raising ceremony (the good old days) around 1933
selors and it can be sumgued, have more profound 1m-. ™ried by a motto that he look
camp for girls. That is what phia and gradually others Charles • Elliot, president of Lt Pnri'inflnenrPbnth nhvsi- trom French author Joseph
, both physimotivated them to look at real came from other cities, Harvard for the last third of
Joubert: "Children have more
estate and buy the Brushy Parents could come to visit at the 19th century, that "sum- cal and psychological, on a eed
™
"
Mountain property. Mrs. any time and they boarded at mer camp is the greatest step child's development than do "
in education that America has the public schools. Thus, all
Escoll could not recall any nearby farm houses,
children
should
have
the
opporion
imposing
umtoimity
and
other camps in the Poconos at
"In the early days after it given the world."
^
effor[ of
coimselors o
the time they were involved first started it grew rapidly,
stimulate c
ren to
Escoll developed a philosophy Srphy'icaran^Tmotional
™ . . T^'f
with the two "Blue" camps.
We had to keep adding bunks,"
a alnst other
g
ind'v'dual chi Getting Blue Mountain Camp Mrs.. Escoll said. "Of course, about camp that he explained deve]opment His book, "War dren
m s
in a book published two weeks camps or Peace Camps,"
P°rts- Some counselstarted was difficult. The we helped the banks a lot be- before his death in 1971. He
ors did not think, that Escoll
made several points:
Escolls traveled to the Phila- cause we borrowed all of our
was strict enough or that the
r- The federal
delphia area, where they soli- money from them at a very
"^ afteer ^°°M the'camp a
were sufficiently disshould subsidize .^u.-^... children
.
cited friends and relatives to high interest,"
lmed
Doctors ad- camps for all children and that clAPvaried
send their children for the two Morris Escoll, who graduated
vised him to get out of the
pared
program was set up
month season. They went to with a degree in forestry from camp business when he suf- the money snould be
f°r the children. It lasted from
the homes of people recom- Cornell in 1916, planted fered a heart attack and he re- from the defense budget.
- A small minority of chil- 7 a - m - '° « at night, giving the
mended by their friends and hundreds of seedlings of white luctantly complied
dren get to have lengthy camp children a choice of activities
got reservations for 90 girls the and red pine, spruce, and EuThe book attempted to syn- stays and most have no camp including woodworking, basfirst year, more than they ex- ropean larch on the camp
ketr
y. pottery making, nature
pected.
grounds. He developed nature thesize several ideas that experience at all or at most' a walks
. dramatics, music, danc"The first year', we had our trails that would become a Escoll acquired from over 40- "week or two at some philanthe
thropie
camp."
ing,
photography and the usual
own generator," Mrs. Escoll central feature of his camp years of experience in
Iand and
Some
water sports. Before
camp
SaiU. "There
mere were
WC1C 11U
pnuiltra program.
pruglellll.
~I*III business
**ULJ..<*. .Jand
«.i«living
I.TI,. in a«
oumc camnq
Laiupo arp
cue still
atiu li11
said.
no phones
and no electricity. We had to
Providing urban children rapidly developing technologi- mited to children of certain luncn' »me was reserved tor
dig wells for water."
with the chance to explore the cal society. Escoll served in ethnic, economic or religous writing daily, letters to parents,
Once the new camp was wonders of life in the fields, World War I in France and he backgrounds but all- children
"We were one of the best
started, the Escolls gave up • streams and woodlands sur- shared a belief with President should have the benefit of a equipped camps in the
the Blue Ridge camp. They rounding the camp was seen as Woodrow Wilson that it was good resident camp "as a mat- country, had the best program,
and. had an international repu' 'The War to ~
End All Wars."
ter:r of right."
right.'
bought more land adjacent to very important by Escoll. He •~
— Camps can show the way tation," Mrs. Escoll said. Some
Resident camps, Escoll artheir new camp to enable them agreed with a statement bv
to better race relations and of the counselors and other
to construct a boy's.camp on .
better human relations.
employes at Blue Mountain
the opposite side of the lake. A
— By taking money from the over the years left to start
week before the new camp was
military budget, "This money their own camps.
to open, a well digger told the
would be spent not for the de"They called my father the
Escolls that the deep well he
struction of tens of thousands dean of camping," Martha Ludug yielded no water.
of lives or of millions of homes beck said. "By the time my
"That was a dramatic moand farms, but would be an in- parents sold the camp, they
merit: We found that we did
.
vestment in building .up the had third generation campers
not have water the week before
lives, the skills, the hopes of coming," she said. In the final
the children came," Mrs.
our children — an investment seasons, more than 100 of the
Escoll said. Escoll appeared
in the future of our country, in 350 summer campers at Blue
before the East- Stroudsburg
our real national security."
Mountain had parents whose
Borough Council, which agreed
Escoll wrote that he expect- childhood experiences included
to let him pump water from
ed critics to dismiss his pro- a stay there. Mrs. Escoll saw
the town reservoir located
posal for integrating camping all of it as she managed the
down the mountainside. Laborwith the traditional educational camp with her husband,
ers worked until dark each
experience as "Utopian" and '-"I really helped in every
night laying pipe and the line
he responded by attempting to angle of it," she said. "Somewas finished three days before
draw a historical parallel with times, I would be so tired at
the children were to arrive
the beginnings of public educa- the end of the day that I would
July 1.
tion. which encountered resis- go to sleep in all my clothes —
New facilities were slowly
tance at first but prevailed in and raised five children at the
added each year. The children
Gir's had their activities, too (1933)
extending education beyond same time."
came by train from PhiladelF
U
& llt