Editor’s Note: As part of our year-long celebration of our 100th Year Anniversary (1922-2022), we’ll post a Throwback Thursday edition of our Alleghany Rattler Newspaper to give you a peek into life at camp across those 100 summers!
In this piece, originally titled “The Twenty-Fifth Season,” Alleghany marks this important quarty century anniversary with special attention to world events and culture.
Twenty-Fifth Season
On June 29, 1946, Camp Alleghany opens for its 25th season and will welcome a capacity number of old and new campers, as well as a grand staff of counselors.
It is fitting to mark the passing of a quarter of a century, in keeping with what other camps this year will be doing, by placing the emphasis on world-wide camping. Realizing how fortunate the United States and Canada have been to be able to continue their operation of their camps during the past war years, let us turn our thoughts to the millions of children all over the world to whom camping would mean so much.
If you are interested in helping send books on camping and related subjects to Czecho-Slovakia, Greece, France, Poland, etc., Miss Ida Oppenheimer, 228 Second Avenue, New York City, would gladly receive them for transportation.
If Greece is your main concern, write to the Near East Federation, 17 West 46th Street, New York City. This agency is working with UNRRA to continue government organization projects carried out last summer.
If the YMCA or YWCA or the Scouts have international connections for you, suggestions as to what you may do can be secured from Catherine Hammett, Girl Scouts, 155 East 44th Street, New York City 17.
Because a specific opportunity presented itself to be of tangible aid this year, Alleghany has already subscribed $100 to the MacJannet Committee to sponsor a French orphan in a camp on Lake Annecy in 1946. From time to time during the summer we will hear from our French friend, telling us what this has meant to her. Mr. MacJannet writes, “We want to thank you very much indeed for sponsoring a French child’s two months vacation on the shore of Lake Annecy. Your camp’s contribution toward closer ties of friendship with France will certainly have far-reaching results, and I am sure that the letters that come out to you from your own camper next summer will be of the greatest interest to your campers in West Virginia.”
We are fortunate in having with us at camp this year two children from Holland — one in Junior and one in Senior camp. What a glorious opportunity to learn from them of the customs and language of the Dutch and to give them the wonderful feeling of American freedom, democracy, and comradeship which they have missed for the past seven years!
In the lands across the sea
In my heart I know there be
Children less fortunate than me.
Let me therefore share with those
Food and money and clothes—
“Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget— lest we forget.”
Adopting as a theme song for the 1946 season, the “Song of Peace,” the words are printed on page 2 of this paper in order that we may all be familiar with them on the Opening Day of camp.
“A Song of Peace”
(Tune: Sibelius’ “Finlandia”)
This is my song, O God of all the nations
A song of peace for lands afar, and mine
This is my hope, my dream, my shrine;
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams the same as mine.
My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight, too, and clover,
And skies are sometimes blue as mine.
Oh, hear my song, thou God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land, and mine.
(This song has been chosen as the theme song for Alleghany’s 1946 season in keeping with our thoughts on world-wide camping.)
