Camp Zoe Memories
2005 Letters
12/05/2005I just want to let you know its a great site for all those that attended summer camp not just Camp Zoe. I'm 41 now but attended camp in East Texas growing up and it was the highlight of my summers before I thought I was too old to attend. This site took me back in time to a great and carefree part of my life, friends, horses, fishing, girls.
Thanks,
Jeff
Dallas, Texas
Thanks for taking the time to write. I appreciate the kind words. Stop by anytime.
09/18/05
Leanne shared the web site with me and I loved seeing it and reading about everyone. Great job. Leanne also shared your email, so she must have told you that I am off on a big adventure, hopefully to circumnavigate the world on a 43 foot Taswell Sailboat with my partner Ron. I left a management position with AIG insurance company, where I developed the Seattle office, hiring 52 nurses to case manage insurance claims. My office was on the 37th floor looking out over Elliot Bay in the heart of the city. Nothing like the infirmary at Camp Zoe and not nearly as much fun.
I occassionally get to tell stories from the days at Camp, like the copper head bite or the 72 campers with 24 hr flu. I think Camp Zoe is at the top of my nursing career.
I am currently in Quayaquil, Ecuador. We have been in Ecuador for 5-6 weeks now, including 3 weeks in the Galapagos Islands. We will keep the boat here and travel around South America until Feb when we will go back to Galapagos for 20 days then head to the South Pacific. I will complete my first year of this trip in Dec. We are not sure how long it will take, we like to say, "until it is over". Without a deadline, it gives us freedom to stay in a place longer if we like it. There is always a little nursing I can do on the journey.
I am flying back to the states next week to see family and spend some time with Leanne. I am so happy that you and all the campers are still happy and healthy. Stay that way!
Without your health, you have nothing.
Nurse Lady,
Cynthia
08/01/05
Just returned from picking up my daughter from a camp in Branson and it
brough a ton of Zoe memories flooding back. Everything from the sickness inducing road to the camp, horseback rides in a field across the creek where we were allowed to let the horses RUN, canoe and float trips on the Current, bus trips to rodeo, walking horse farm, Two rivers (?) which always included the stop a the ice cream place inRound Spring, drinking water from the well in front of the dining hall, camp fires, snack shack, the songs - WOW seems like yesterday all of a
sudden. I spent several years there mostly the second two sesssions and went thorugh Mac's, Boy's and Tent cabins. The years were about 74-80?
Bill Baker
The ice cream place was called the Dairy Isle and it was in Eminence. Huge soft-serve cones for 10 cents or 25 cents.
05/04/05
My first memories of Camp Zoe, are from 1961-1963. As a small child, we (my family) would go visit my grandparents, the one named painter Joe, was my grandpa, being so small the memories are few, but sweet, I remember the burros that were always there, some days those burros seemed
awfully big, and the smell of the sealant grandpa used around the camp, the gravel bars, and big summer floppy hats blowing in the wind as you chased it across the gravel bars, wooden stools for the cafeteria, [and] the showerhouse was not far from grandma and grandpa's cabin. One day while
returning from the showerhouse to the cabin, the burros were between the cabin and I. I waited and when that didn't work I ran to the safety of the cabin. I'll always love Camp Zoe memories they are about the only memories i have of my grandparents [whom] i miss so much. Then as a teenager (15 yrs) I worked and lived at camp zoe for a summer,i t was my good fortune to get to work with my great aunt fredia conway, the camp kids and staff loved aunt Freida (the dark haired lady in your picture by the back step of the kitchen) and her cooking, especially her cherry cobler. Zoe will always be a special part of my life.
Debra Conway
Debra's message was originally posted on the ecoliving.com message board.
04/05/05
Well, this is the most unbelievable thing! I was just fooling around with Google maps when I looked up Round Spring, MO, and saw this link when I searched in "camps". From what I've read in your bio section, I may be the oldest camper -- [attended in the] very late 40s' and early 50's -- three summers.
Mr. and Mrs. McMahan owned the camp then. She was the P.E. teacher at North Glendale School, where I went till 6th grade, when I moved to Birmingham, Ala. But I had to stop going sooner -- they only let boys go till 5th grade or something like that; girls could go until their teens. I didn't understand why at the time and asked Mrs. McMahan about it and she said to ask my parents.
I didn't see anything about Von Doon, on your site, who lived in the mountains and had killed himself when he ran his tractor into Round Spring. He haunted the mountains and the outhouses we used there. Is it appropriate to fill out a bio? I have some great stories from those three summers.
Lonnie FalkMr. Falk added this about the camp legend of Von Doon.
I spent three years at Zoe, two of them two-week sessions and one of them a three-session combo. The Von Doon story always was told the first night, Saturday or Sunday, cannot really remember for sure, of each session. The routine was always the same, story after lights out with the counselor who told it using a flashlight under his face to make him look scary.
Von Doon lived in the Ozarks, of course, and was a regular farmer. He had a threshing machine attached to his tractor and worked hard. Had a girlfriend who, of course, jilted him and he went mad, driving all over in his tractor until he ran it in to Round Spring (which was "bottomless") where he drowned. Von Doon, tractor and thresher never seen again.
Not so Von Doon's ghost. Who roamed the Ozarks around Camp Zoe. (Ghostly sounds usually provided by assistant counselors from outside the Boy's Cabin). No real specifics but several people ran in to Von Doon's ghost and, of course, were never heard of again. Their bodies, like Von Doon's, may have been at the bottom of Round Spring.
See the letters from 2004