A Period Of Transition

"How sweet that joyous sound, whenever we meet again"

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Farewell Uncle Jerry :(

PAIKIN, JEROME - Jerome Paikin a long time Nanuet resident passed away Sunday leaving his wife of 60 years Patricia, their four children, Sherry Delinko and her husband Steven, Pamela Paikin and her husband Edwin Barker, Deborah Klock, and David Paikin and his wife Katie, and their eight grandchildren, David, Jason, Rachel Ilana, Sarah Leah Adam and Andrew. He graduated from NYU, served as First Lieutenant in WWII as a Bombardier Pilot in Japan. After the War, he moved to Spring Valley to become the Music Director at Spring Valley High School and met Patricia there. He and his wife founded the Knolls Day Camp in Nanuet and also served on the Nanuet Board of Education and Clarkstown Planning Committee and President and Chairman, respectively. Following a long teaching career he then started a new career in Real Estate with the Tenney Corporation and then Helmsley Spear in NYC. He was one of the founders of and the first President of the Rockland County Music Teachers Association. The funeral will be at Hellmans Chapel in Spring Valley at 1PM on Tuesday June 8th.

Published: Tuesday, June 8th, 2010


Just got this from an old Knolls buddy.

(Click on the image to enlarge) 


The Knolls Summer Camp - Nanuet, NY

The Knolls Day Camp sat sandwiched in between land owned by chemical giant Lederle Labs and the St. Agnes Convent and Boys Orphanage. It was obviously once a sprawling farm complete with a big barn and a red silo. The camp boasted a quarter mile horse track, 3 swimming pools, 2 tennis courts, 4 ball fields, basketball goals, a playground, and a mini golf course. Most of the facilities were converted from some other use, like the Cafeteria which was formerly a multi vehicle garage.

My parents divorced when I was 6. Around the same time they decided to send me off to summer camp. I am certain I started in the Nursery because there are some really vivid memories of "nap-time" on a big orange towel that I brought from home. I guess I was 5 or 6 years old. I was one of a few repeat attendees at the Knolls. Most of the people I remember went there for one or two years in a row. A few, like me, Todd and Theza Griesman, Mike Coch, and Joel Millman went back year after year.

Best I can tell, I started going there in 1967. I skipped a few years here and there, but it became an 8 week summer ritual. The summers of 1976, 1977, and 1978 were sort of a a period of transition that shaped much of the rest of my life.

I don't know much about the origins of the camp. I have only a collection of somewhat faint and distant memories. I am fairly certain it was owned by (“Uncle”) Jerry Patkin and (“Uncle”) Mike Adrian, the camp hosted probably a hundred or more kids, nursery aged through their early teens every summer. I have very few memories of those times except for visiting the camp with my dad. The earliest memory I have is in the Nursery waking up my orange towel.

Daydream Believer:
The Nursery & the Early Years. (1967-1975)

Between the Nursery and when I was in a group called the Bears (around 12 or 13), I remember little and have a few mental images of the Knolls. The camp emblem was horse head and the words, “the Knolls” that was drawn on a sign at the camp entrance next to a gray fieldstone wall. That same emblem was borne on many white T-Shirts and sweatshirts everywhere throughout the camp.

I also remember one of the first drivers who took me to camp. She had straight red hair, round gold wire framed glasses, pink skin, lots of freckles, and she drove a white and faded blue VW micro-bus. Drivers used their own cars and through the years I went to camp in everything from a VW micro-bus to a big yellow school bus. Probably my favorite was an orange Chevy Camaro with the in-dash 8 track player that played endless loops of The Wild, Innocent & the E Street Shuffle and Fly Like an Eagle.

Hazily, I also remember trading baseball cards with “the Babe” (a chubby Babe Ruth looking kid), Gordon Moskowitz, Ben, Mike, and others in the back of a station wagon on the way to softball games and events. I also remember the camp held an annual “Carnival” event set up on the tennis courts where each age group would create a boothlike "bubble-blowing", ball-toss, pie throwing. I never could blow bubbles... so I went there for the free gum.

On Wednesdays there was usually a “cook-out” where the Camp Director, Irwin Dolgoff grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. We ate cole-slaw, baked beans, hot dogs and watermelon (and spit watermellon seeds for sport) as we sat on the lawn outside the “office” building. If I recall correctly, Monday's we had hamburgers; Tuesday's it was Pizza; Wednesday's was the cookout; and Fridays tunafish sandwiches (jazzed up with potato chips - I habit I still have). We sometimes asked for peanut butter and jelly when they were serving a particular food we did not like.

Every day ended with Irwin's announcements and Uncle Mike Adrian playing games with us in the big field in front of the Nursery before we all got in our cars to go home. Uncle Mike was a balding, cigar chomping character that would get all the campers to join him in singingsongs like, “High Hopes”, “BINGO”, “The Hokey Pokey”, and “On the Dummy Line”. If you don't know these songs, look them up. They are some of the corniest songs ever written.

And every day before we went home we would all sing to the tune of Taps (for a few years with a trumpet accompanyment); and we sang, “The day is done, gone the sun, from the hills, from the lake, from the skies. All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.”
SA-TUR-DAY Night!
The Bears. (1976)

By this time I was really enjoying summer camp. I asked my parents to send me back year after year.

What I remember about being a Bear begins with Counselor Danny Mazola. To keep us busy we play a lot of softball. We also played volleyball, miniature golf, basketball and tether-ball. We went swimming twice a day with "instructional" swim in the AM and "free" swim in the afternoons. We had a good tennis instructor and I learned a few things that helped me play reasonably well later in life.

Arts & Crafts was a hit... music too. Our music instructor was this guy with really long thick frizzy hair who parted it way on one side like a comb-over, except he was not bald at all. He played the guitar and the piano. Unlike Uncle Mike's classics from the 40's, this guy was teaching us the Beatles, Bill Withers and Dobie Grey.

Every year we went to the Orange County Fair and Bear Mountain. I remember spending rainy days in one of the buildings behind the barn watching movies and playing board games. In the early years we played Simon Says and 1,2,3, Red Light. In later years we played "running bases" where there were two cahchers and 20 kids running back and forth between the "bases" trying hard not to get tagged out.

We learned the songs kids learn, and we played the games kids play. We put potato chips on our tuna sandwiches. We made friends and then we parted ways and went back to school.

My friends from back then were notably Paul Cohen, Robbie Saul, Todd Griesman and his brother Dwight and his sister Theza. And I remember Mike Coch because he was the left handed second baseman which made for some unusual moves when we had to turn a double-play in softball. I vaguely remember there was a skinny kid names Scott Phillips who gave Mike Coch the nickname "moochez", and a red headed kid named Paul Newman. I developed my first crush that year. Leslie Schneider from Pearl River NY who shared a seat many times on the same the school bus to and from camp.

As Bears we were eligible to attend the “sleep-over”, which was a single night camp-out under the stars in a sleeping bag. I remember my step-dad taking me to the sporting goods store to buy a sleeping bag. I remember it was blue with an orange interior. I don't remember much about that night except for the smell of the campfire and how it got pretty cold and really damp for an August night. Andhow the sleeping bag was really cold and wet by the morning.

National Headlines July 4 -: Tall Ships in NY harbor celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Bicentennial July 17 - The 1976 Summer Olympics begin in Montreal, Canada. July 29 - In New York City, the first "Son of Sam" attack in a series of year long attacks. August 4 - The first outbreak of Legionnaire's disease kills 29 in Philadelphia. Popular Songs 1. "Saturday Night" ... Bay City Rollers 2. "Convoy" ... C.W. McCall 3. “Rock'n Me" - Steve Miller Band 4. "Tonight's The Night" - Rod Stewart 5. "Love Rollercoaster" ... Ohio Players 6. "Why Can't We Be Friends" - War 7. "Shake Your Booty" - KC & The Sunshine Band 8. "More Than a Feeling" - Boston 9. "The Boys Are Back In Town" - Thin Lizzy 10. "Boogie Fever" Sylvers (1)

Feels Like the First Time.
The Cougars. (1977)

National Headlines
July 13 - The New York City Blackout of 1977 lasts for 25 hours.
August 10 - David Berkowitz (Son Of Sam) is captured in Yonkers, New York.
August 12 - The NASA Space Shuttle makes its first test flight off the back of a Boeing 747.
August 16 - Rock music legend Elvis Presley dies in Memphis, Tennessee.

Popular Songs
1. "Black Water" - Doobie Brothers
2. "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing" ... Leo Sayer
3. "I Wish" ... Stevie Wonder
4. "Car Wash" ... Rose Royce
5. "Listen To What The Man Said" - Wings
6. "Blinded By the Light" ... Manfred Mann's Earth Band
7. "New Kid in Town" ... Eagles
8. "Bohemian Rhapsody" - Queen
9. "Rich Girl" ... Daryl Hall and John Oates
10. "Fox On The Run" - Sweet


The first rock and roll music I ever heard was in the car on the way to camp. “Light My Fire” and “Hello, I Love You” by the Doors boldly stand out; so I guess those were my themes of induction so to speak. I Kevin Plummers Camaro we listened to either Steve Miller's Fly Book of Dreams, or Springsteen's Wild, Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.

Our Counselor was Eric Goodman. Our Jr Counselor was Joel Millman and our CIT was Todd Griesman. Our group was made up of some of the Bears. I remember most of them by the positions they played in softball. Pitcher – Chris Jensen; Catcher – David Jensen; First Base – Scott Quitadamo; Second Base – Mike Coch; Short Stop – Gregg Brennon; Third Base – Kevin West; Left Field – Danny Herzer; Center Field – Larry Gual; Short Center Field – Paul Cohen; Right Field – Steven Dricks and Jeff Cohen. There were others like Robbie Saul and Danny Reardon and others whose positions and names escape me.

Coch, Brennan and I formed a sub-group of the Cougars that we called the Untouchables. We selected members from our group to join based on our perception of how "cool" they were . At first we let Paul Cohen in the Untouchables, but later we voted him out. I remember him saying to Coch, “But Mike, I thought you were my friend”. I think we felt kind of bad about that and let him back in afterward.

We conjured up some catch phrases like “it’s the death”, “so killer”, and “sup”. Probably the best line Gregg ever dropped on us was, “I was out driving with my woman last night…” which was hysterical because he was still a year away from getting his learners permit. Together, the Cougars were just a bunch of teenage boys having lots of fun and loads of laughs. Occasionally we were branded troublemakers for the pranks we played on each other. There was a point where our mischief (which was benign at its worst) caught the ire of Ed the Handyman who chased us up a rain soaked hill in front of the boys lockers. I remember Brennan slipping on the wet earth and taking a very messy and muddy spill.

I think the girls group was the Gazelles or something like that. We hung out with them a lot. My second summer crush was with a girl named Aileen and it lasted all summer long. Other girls from that group were Cara Evans, Debbie Miller, Michele Beier, Lori DelVecchio, Michelle Vogt, and a girl named Robin.

Like the years before, we did the usual stuff Horseback Riding, Arts & Crafts, Swimming, Tennis, Basketball, the Fair, and the Carnival. But this year, the game of softball became the center of our collective universe. We played other local summer camp teams like Knights Day Camp, Candy Mountain, Deerkill, Blue Rill, and Ramaquois. There was something like one or two inter-camp games a week and they were held both home and away. On the away games we spent most of the trip there and back cutting each other up (we called them chop fights) with things like “Yo Mamma” jokes.

We also spent a lot of time listening to music that summer. There were several people who brought their portable radios and 8-Track tape players to camp. The most popular radio was the Toot-A-Long which was a circular tube-like radio that rotated open into an “S” shape. The 8-Track player by Panasonic called the Dynamite 8 which was this square box type with a plunger handle that you pushed in to change the tracks. Another popular past time for us was the playing on the swings. Next to the Arts & Crafts building was a swing set. At least once a day we would get on the swings and swing as high as we could. This daredevil behavior was compounded by our need to jump from the swing at the apex of the arc and flail our arms and land and roll forward with the finesse of a grade school Olympian. More drama than danger, we had great fun launching ourselves skyward time and time again. We also played a variation of soccer we called “speedball”.

Speedball is a quick, fast paced sport that is simple to teach and combines many aspects of other sports. The goal of the game is throw, kick, smash, or head the ball into a hockey or indoor soccer goal. It is played with two teams, each with one goalkeeper. Players can hold the ball for a maximum of three seconds before they either shoot, pass, or drop the ball to their feet and play soccer with it. A player can also "air dribble" the ball three times while running. Once the ball hits the floor, the normal rules of soccer apply. The only way to convert it back to European handball is to kick the ball in the air to another player, or pass it back to your goalkeeper who can pick it up.

I also have some particularly fond memories of Color Wars (Camp Olympics). Basically the entire group of campers were divided in two groups (Blue Team and Green Team) and they were pit against each other is a competition of games, activities, sports, and such. I remember the great anticipation watching the score board as the two teams would count their points toward the ultimate goal of camp team champion. One of the last and deciding events of Color War that year was a game of touch football that was tied through the final seconds. With one play remaining, I threw a long pass downfield that was knocked away and we lost the game.

We Are The Champions.
Sr. Boys. (1978)National Headlines
June 12 - Serial killer David Berkowitz ("Son of Sam") is sentenced to 25 years to life.
June 19 - The comic strip Garfield debuts in newspapers.
August 6 - Pope Paul VI dies at age of 80.
August 25 - U.S. Army Sergeant Walter Robinson "walks" across the English Channel using homemade water shoes.

Popular Songs
1."Copacabana" ... Barry Manilow
2."Stayin' Alive" ... Bee Gees
3."Boogie Ooogie Ooogie" ... A Taste of Honey
4."Night Fever" ... Bee Gees
5. "Life's Been Good"… Joe Walsh
6."Hot Child in the City" ... Nick Gilder
7."Grease" Frankie Valli
8. "Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad" - Meat Loaf
9. "YMCA" - The Village People
10."Miss You" ... Rolling Stones

Our Counselor was David Leibman who was studying to be an environmental lawyer and our Jr Counselor was Joel Millman whose mom was the camp nurse. Our CIT was Todd Griesman.
The Sr. Boys were made up of (mostly) the same people as the Cougars. There were a few new faces like Vaughn Chambers and a few others. Like a senior class ready to graduate, Coch, Brennon, and I were the “core” of the group, or at least that was the reality as we saw it. Almost everyone from the Cougars and the Gazelles came back that year and it made for a pretty cool last “hurrah”.

Our Counselor, Dave was an Aikido student and he would share some of his moves with us. This usually would up a free-for-all with us attacking him from all angles and he’d flip us around on the grass until we all ran out of steam. That 12-on-one eventually developed into mock wrestling within the group as well. We’d have at least one match each day where we would throw pretend punches and kicks and roll to the ground feigning injury and unconsciousness. It looked like a scene from a Batman when the Joker’s henchmen would battle the dynamic duo. Brennon only lasted 4 weeks and we had to finish out the summer without him.

Almost right away you could see things had changed. For one, we all started noticing the girls. Within the first week most of us has started with some of the Sr. Girls. Mind you, “going out” basically meant holding hands walking from the ball field to the cafeteria and BS-ing at the pool. I’ll never forget Coch telling me about a line he used on one of the girls, “Why don’t you think about going out with me”.

This year’s sleep-over was probably one of the most memorable and most frightening times in my life. Our counselor Dave gathered us together after the sun went down in front of one of the barn’s garage doors. We sat and listened as Dave proceeded to weave a scary tale of giant South American ants that made their way up to NY State. He said they could run 60 miles an hour and pick up cars. And that was only the beginning. Meanwhile, Joel, our Jr. Counselor reminded us to make sure we stuck close to camp that night because there were rumors of an escape from a nearby insane asylum by some guy named Mad Mountain Jake. Dave’s story seemed believable enough to a bunch of 15 & 16 year olds. At one point near the end of this tale, Dave used an elbow to bang really hard on the garage door behind him. I think we all pretty much jumped out of our skin. I remember Larry Gual jumping up and running away screaming wildly. He let us in on the joke in the morning, but that night we did stick close to camp.

Toward the end of the summer we made the annual trip to Bear Mountain. We had done this as Cougars as well so we were truly looking forward to conquering the mountain again this year. Only this time we took the route less (if ever) traveled – more or less straight up the steepest slope we could find. It was a brutal climb near the end and the effects show clearly in some of the pictures we took. At one point, Coch started to fall backward and grabbed a dead tree which instantly broke off in his hand and he (complete with that Wylie E Coyote look of surprise) tumbled backward and rolled once or twice. The camera on a strap around his neck made a wide loop and clocked him in the side of his head.

There were three other events that year that remain forever engrained in my mind. Paul Cohen’s party in Englewood Cliffs, swimming at Vaughn Chambers place, and the Golf Outing on Route 9 in Nyack where Coch, Brennon and I closed out the evening with a sleep over at my place.

Paul’s party was at his parents place and it was a blast. Everyone came – Sr. Boys and Sr. Girls. We partied on for three or four hours. Everybody talking, telling stories, cutting each other up; and by the end of the night we were tighter than ever. Vaughn’s swim party was at the indoor pool at Winston Towers in Englewood Cliffs.

The pool had two diving boards and I remember Coch attempting a one and a half flip and never coming out of the tuck and only making it “one and a quarter”. He hit the water with a wallop than sounded like a watermelon hitting the sidewalk from 20 fee up. We spent most of the day doing cannon balls trying to splash the indoor ceiling.

The golf outing/ sleep over was another classic Coch, Brennon, Quitadamo moment. Of course I was the first to accidentally pitch a club onto the fairway. My mom picked drove us back and we stopped at the Tenafly Diner for some food on the way to my place. I remember we could not stop laughing. We tried but just the giggles kept escalating. There was a point where the three of us were in the men’s room and we just could not control the laughter. Around midnight that night, still laughing and telling stories in my room the door burst open and my mom told us to quiet down and get to sleep.

August 22, 1978. My first rock concert was Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at Madison Square Garden in NYC. Coch and I went together. I ordered the tickets on June 6 via a mail in lottery (I still have the envelope) and we waited weeks for them to arrive. Before they arrived, Coch kept saying, “When you get those tickets, I need to know what color they are”, because the ticket color was an indication of where the seats were located. Finally, when I got the tickets I decided to withhold the color until the day of the show… for no other reason that to keep the anticipation going. About a year later Mike returned a record album he borrowed. On the blank part of the center vinyl, near the label, he scratched, “What color are those tickets???”

Apart from the side trips and events; softball remained the lynchpin of our summer fun. And while we thoroughly enjoyed other camp activities; softball was the Raison D'être at the Knolls. We had a fairly good team and we played seriously enough to have a fair amount of “wins” under our belt by the time the summer rolled to a close.

The end of every summer at the Knolls would be met with a certain amount of sadness as new found friendships would once again part ways… some to be renewed next years, others gone forever. This would be the last summer I would spend in the company of all of those people in a single setting. And while I have had some really good times in my life since, nothing came close to the Summer of 78.

Sail On...
C.I.T.’s (1979)

A few of us went back for one more year as Counselors in Training but it wasn’t really the same any more. Most of the familiar faces were gone and by the time summer of over, the memories faded pretty fast. Within the next few years, most of us would lose touch and have gone our separate ways.

Epilogue.

In all, I think I attended the Knolls for a total of 11 summers. One of the other early memories I have was all the crying that happened on the last day of camp. Of course, at age 7, 8, or 9, parting ways with these new friends was not so bad because there were other things to do, new friends to make, and many days of fun and games to come.

Probably right before I finished High School in 1981, there was a Knolls Summer Camp Reunion. Not much of a smashing success – but, hey you cannot compare a 3 hour party to 8 weeks of summer fun.

For a short time I stayed in touch with Brennon, Gual, Kevin West, Michelle Vogt, and the Jensen brothers. Brennon died in a car crash in the early 1980’s. I remain in touch with a few old friends from way back then and I often wonder what happened to all the others.

Mike Coch is still pretty much the oldest friend I have. Michelle Beier and I correspond every now and then. And I traded some emails with Todd Griesman a few years back. The Knolls are long gone now… The camp has been converted to a special needs school and most of the buildings and facilities are grown over with trees and brush.

It’s been about 25 years since I stepped foot on the Knolls property, but some memories are as vivid as if they happened yesterday. I write this today because I uncovered a box of old photo’s and negatives from those days gone-bye and it made me wonder if any of those old friends ever think back to the Knolls and wonder - whatever happened to …….

And even though we can never go backward in time – we can remember.

If by some miracle this page actually generated enough interest – I’ll set something up in Yahoo so we can chat a bit. Meanwhile – you can view my Knolls Scrapbook on line at Kodak Gallery.

If you are an Ex-Knolls camper and want to contribute thoughts, photos, or other memorabilia – drop me a line and I’ll see that it gets posted.

Below is a list of names of people that I remember from camp and to whom I dedicate this page. I’ll add more as time permits and as they fade back into my memory.

Jerry Patkin
Mike Adrian
David Patkin
Pat Patkin
Irwin Dolgoff
Arly Millman
Mary Michael Keller
Kevin Plummer
Max Vanderlinden
Linda Tedford
Eric Goodman
David Leibman
Danny Mazola
Eric Goodman
Joel Millman
Scott Linton
Dwight Griesman
Todd Griesman
Larry Gual
Robbie Kurtz
Robbie Saul
Kevin West
Paul Newman
Gregg Brennon
Paul Cohen
Jeff Cohen
Gordon Moskowitz
Michael Coch
David Jensen
Chris Jensen
Steven Dricks
Danny Reardon
Danny Herzer
Steven Dricks
Aileen Reardon
Michele Beier
Lori Delvecchio (Jerry)
Michelle Vogt
Theza Griesman
Joy Gitlin
Carla Edwards
Cara Evans
Leslie Schneider
Rochelle Schneider
Debbie Miller
Karin Miller
Robert Coch
Jeff Quitadamo
Scott Phillips
Ed the Handyman