Valdosta Times, Thursday, May 13, 1948

Glenrochie One of Camps

Drawing Droves of Youth

by Carolyn Williams

Schools will soon be closing and thousands of boys and girls trooping off to summer camps tucked away in mountain retreats or other inviting spots where they can camp outdoors, romp, and play to their heart’s desire.

One of the forerunners of the hundreds of camps that have mushroomed into being in the last quarter century to accommodate this mass exodus is Camp Glenrochie, the oldest summer camp for girls.  Founded in 1901 at The Meadows, the camp is situated in the Alleghenies of Virginia on a tract of 300 acres of mountain woodland and fields, two miles from Abingdon.

   During the 1900’s when it was known as a “summer school” and its young lady “students” struggled to combine bustles, layers of petticoats, black-bloomer and white middy blouse play clothes with tent life, the discreet boast of the nation’s oldest girls’ camp was, “Camping a feature.”

   Nowadays, Camp Glenrochie makes no bones about the matter.  It is first, last and foremost a camp.  Fancy dress and the trappings of city life are left behind.  The campers live in tents pitched in a semi-circle near the rustic camp buildings and the modern swimming pool. 

   Girls to Glenrochie (pronounced Glen-Ro-kie) to live in tents, not houses, ride on horseback, not in automobiles; to enjoy themselves, not to be told what they are to do every 15 minutes of the day, beginning with up-setting exercises before breakfast. 

   In its early “summer school” days, the “school” part of the day took only one hour.  Mrs. Willoughby Reade, the founder, felt that anyone with a mind should be required to use it for at least one hour each day.  Nowadays, the hour of study has given way to a required rest hour for the body!

   “I’m not too sure that this is any improvement,” laughingly adds Dr. Frank R. Reade, present director of the Camp and son of its founder.  Formerly professor of English at Georgia Tech, Dr. Reade is now on leave of absence as president of the Georgia State Womans College at Valdosta. 

   Various traditions have grown up through the years with the campers, many of whom return year after year, and later send their own daughters to Glenrochie.

   One of these traditions is the climax of the camp season, the farewell banquet, when awards earned during the summer are presented.  On this occasion the most coveted of camp honors, selection of the best all-round camper in announced.  Last summer, Caroline Phelan, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Earl W. Phelan of Valdosta, was honored as the best all-round junior camper. 

   Other Valdosta girls who have become familiar with the pleasures and delights of Glenrochie in recent summers include Peggy Reid, Cile Ferguson, Betty Sue Mixson, Virginia Mixson, Sandra Shaw, and Beth Belote.

   Glenrochie counselors from Valdosta in recent summers have included Mrs. Beth Whitaker McRae, Mrs. Virginia Tuck Parrish, Mrs. Catherine Garbutt Blanton, the former Miss Willene Roberts, and Misses Ruth Reid, Louise Holcombe and Virginia Bolen.

Roanoke Times, August 13, 1950

The Southwest Corner

by Goodridge Wilson

   Southwest Virginia has the oldest Camp for Girls in the United States, and it is only fifty years old.

   Camping has been an integral part of the pattern of American life ever since Captain John Smith and associates camped out on Jamestown Island while getting sleeping quarters built.  Come to think of it, those worthies of 1607 more likely than not slept aboard their little ships anchored in the river while the first Jamestown shelters were going up, but even so camping out in the open has been an important part of American living since the earliest days of white folks’ living in this land.

   Hunters have camped out; men going fishing have camped out; travellers whether going by covered wagon or otherwise have camped along the way; the families, singly or in groups, have gone camping in tents, cabins, or brush arbors; there have been innumerable parties camping out for pleasure; camps for lumbering, mining, and all sorts of business purposes; camps for religious meetings; all sorts of camps from the beginning until now.

   But apparently no one ever thought of a camp operated on a commercial basis for the purpose of inoculating girls with the out of doors virus that they might obtain the benefits inherent in this good old American custom.  I am told that about fifty years ago two such camps were established in New England, but that the first to start anywhere in the United States was Camp Glenrochie, near Abingdon.

   Its jubilee Year is to be celebrated with a banquet staged on or near the 17^th of this month, when the fiftieth successive camp will close.  Old campers of former years, among them Mrs. Churchill Gibson of Richmond, one of the four who constituted the first camp in 1901, will be on hand to recall happy days of fifty summers.

   It is good to get in the company of cheerful, wholesome, and happy people, especially when the company includes some thirty-five happy little girls, bubbling over with the joy of living.  It was my good fortune recently to get into that sort of company, on the steep side of one of the wooded “Knobs” south of Abingdon, when Mrs. Wilson and I accepted an invitation from Frank and Jean.  They run Camp Glenrochie, where for forty-eight years all the girls have been calling him Frank, and for thirty-three years have been calling her Jean.  Otherwise they are known as Dr. and Mrs. Frank R. Reade of Valdosta, Ga., where they make their home and where for fifteen years he was president of the Georgia State Woman’s College.  For eleven years prior to that he was English professor at Georgia Tech; for several years before that an instructor in the Episcopal High School; and before that a student at the University of Virginia, where he acquired a Ph. D. degree, a Phi Beta Kappa key, and sundry other distinctions that are highly valued in the scholastic world.

   Jean Cunningham, a little girl of Savannah, Ga., came to the camp in 1915.  She came back for two more years as a camper, then as a counselor, and then kept on coming as Mrs. Frank Reade, but Jean to the Glenrochie girls and to most of the people of Abingdon who know her.  It is said that Savannah had the first Girls Scout Troop in America and Jean was a member of it.  While her husband was teaching at Georgia Tech she won the Women’s Golf Championship of the City of Atlanta.  She, like her husband, is a grand person, one of that wholesome, happy, cheerful kind whose company is good. 

   Camp Glenrochie was started by Frank’s mother, Mrs. Willougby Reade, who was born and raised at “The Meadows”, one of the most spacious and noted of the historic ante-bellum homes of Southwest Virginia.  The mansion in which she was born was built in the early nineteenth century, possibly by William King, one of the richest Southwest Virginias of his time, but I think it was built by Captain Francis Smith who acquired William King’s wealth by marrying his widow.  Governor Wyndham Robertson married their daughter and made his home at “The Meadows”.  It passed to the Governor’s son, Captain Francis Smith Robertson.  The place is now the home of Dr. J. Coleman Motley, retired surgeon of the Johnston-Willis Memorial Hospital in Abingdon.  The original house burned some years ago.  Dr. Motley rebuilt, and I am told that his present home is much like the original, but smaller, lacking some rooms and a large porch in the rear that the old mansion had.

   One of Captain Frank Robertson’s daughters married Willougby Reade, who taught English at the Episcopal High School for fifty-three years.  Retired, he is now living with his second wife, the former Miss Nan Griffin, in Bedford.  Mrs. Reade would visit her old home every summer, and in the summer of 1901 she started Camp Glenrochie in its back yard.

   She erected a tent in the back yard of “The Meadows”, in which she put four girls.  They were Louise and Nellie Bowman of Lynchburg, and Elizabeth and Gay Lloyd, daughters of Bishop Arthur Lloyd of Virginia and New York.  All four of these first campers are now living, and at least one of them, Gay Lloyd, now Mrs. Gibson, is expected for the Jubilee Banquet.  The girls of the first camp slept in tents in “The Meadows” back yard and had their meals in the house with the family.

   In 1914 the camp was moved to its present location on the south side of “The Meadows” farm.  It has a few simple wooden buildings—a screened in dining room, a social hall, an office, cabins that serve as sleeping quarters for Frank and Jean.  The girls still sleep in tents, which are arranged in a semi-circle and pitched on wooden platforms that keep them dry.  Comparatively level fields lie at the foot of the steep wooded “Knob” upon which the camp is built and beyond them stretches one of Southwest Virginia’s characteristic long distance views.

   Camp sports include swimming, tennis, rifle shooting, and horse back riding, all supervised by well qualified instructors.  The first instructor in horse back riding and in rifle showing was a Confederate officer who rode with J.E.B. Stuart as a member of his staff, Captain Frank Smith Robertson, grandfather of Frank R. Reade.  The first instructor in tennis was Willoughby Reade, who in the first Virginia State Tournament was runner up to the Singles Champion, Wyndham White of Roanoke, and with him won the double championship.  Dr. Willoughby Reade was camp director until 1947.  Since then his son Frank has carried on. 

   Glenrochie girls attend church services in Abingdon on Sundays, which reminds me that the first recorded camp in Virginia history was an awning stretched between trees under which the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was administered on Jamestown Island.

In 1953 and 1954, the final debts of Camp Glenrochie were paid out of the estate of Willoughby A. Reade who owned a life interest in the 40-acre Camp Glenrochie Tract.

Nov. 6, 1953, W. H. Arnold, wintering horses for Camp Glenrochie 1952-53, $125

Jan. 14, 1954, W. H. Williams & Co. – Camp Glenrochie indebt. in full, $500

Jan. 22, 1954, Marjorie Estelle Carter, services rendered Camp Glenrochie Summer 1950, $75

Jan. 22, 1954, Beth W. McRae, balance of salary for summer of 1947 Camp Glenrochie, $75

Jan. 25, 1954, Frank R. Reade, balance account due re operation camp, $748.56

Jan. 25, 1954, Jean Reade, balance of indebt. re operation camp, $1,800

Jan. 25, 1954, Cal Black, balance due re services rendered Camp Glenrochie as handyman and gardener, $69.50

Jan. 26, 1954, Cora Black, balance due re services rendered Camp Glenrochie for maid services during last camp season, $7

Feb. 1, 1954, Beatrice Williams Charbonneau, balance salary for services rendered at Camp Glenrochie summer 1947, $100

Feb. 4, 1954, Craign Motor Co., balance due on account Camp Glenrochie, $100

Source:

In the estate of Willoughby Reade.  First and Final Account, First National Bank of Alexandria, Virginia, covering June 19, 1952 to Feb. 18, 1954.  Valdosta State University Archives 2-1-3, box 5, Frank R. Reade papers.

Washington County News

Thursday, May 2, 1968

page 9

(Editor’s note: Glenrochie may be known today as a home for tired businessmen and a hideaway for golfers whose bosses are out of town.  There was a time in a more carefree age, though, when its rocky glens echoed to the refined voices of elegant young ladies in maxi-skirts.  Then, as now, the town of Abingdon wooed Glenrochie.  Then, as now, the town was spurned.  Here is the first of three articles on how Glenrochie came to be.  It’s good reading.)

Glenrochie past makes today’s suburbanites seem pale

by Meade Campbell

   The Popular Glenrochie Country Club with its tough nine-hold golf course also sports two asphalt tennis courts, a festive club house, a somewhat abandoned ski run, and a swimming pool with patient life guards, who specialize in teaching the young how not to drown so they can grow up to be replacements.  It is a pleasure dome decreed in 1955 by certain restless citizens tired of going to each others houses or to far flung places like Saltville and Bristol for entertainment. 

   It is located on one of the wooded knobs south of Abingdon, once a part of “The Meadows,” the 700-acre farm of Wyndham Robertson, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, who, upon the resignation of Governor Tazewell, became Governor in 1836.

   The name “Glenrochie” is sometimes, perhaps logically, said to be an Indian name, but it isn’t.  It is a Scottish transposition of “Rocky Glen,” an apt description for this rugged darned terrain, that has long been a place of merriment.  As Camp Glenrochie it offered even more diversion than now, such as horseback riding, riflery, archery, canoeing, basketball, baseball, theatricals, handicrafts, china painting, afternoon tea, and of course, camping.

   Its genesis was a guest explosion at the always hospitable “The Meadows.”

   In the summer of 1901, there were four more guests than beds or floor space for pallets and the simple solution was to pitch a tent in the back yard to accommodate the Misses Louise and Nellie Bowman of Lynchburg and Elizabeth and Gay Lloyd of New York.  They were so pleased with the arrangement that they refused to return to the house when there was again room for them and almost refused to leave at all.  They were the first campers.  They returned the next summer with two more friends and the next with two more and another tent had to be pitched. 

   Mary Robertson Reade, daughter of Captain Frank Robertson (then heir to The Meadows) and the wife of Willoughby Reade, teacher of literature at Episcopal High School at Alexandria, spent summers at her home, and was responsible for inviting the overflow in the first place.  After the first summer she began to call the tent traffic a “Summer School in Virginia Mountains, Camping a Feature,” and made it a commercial enterprise.

   The 1904 brochure states that ten boarding students could be accommodated and that “only such restrictions as a careful mother would exercise will be imposed upon the girls.”  They slept in the tents or in the house as their disposition or the weather directed, but Mrs. Reade specified that they must never return from town in the evenings unchaperoned and that after dark the girls must be on porches or in parties on the grounds and that tete-a-tetes were discouraged.  Encouraged on the other hand was “reading of substantial literature and papers, but there is no rule in the matter.”

   Lawn tennis was played in a grove by the young ladies, wearing hats, veils and maxi-skirts.  At the proper time, panting young swans from town were invited for tea at the tennis court.  It was expected that they arrive at this proper time, and leave at the next proper time, and there was no equivocation about this.  They did as they were told.

   In 1905 a clay court supplanted the grass one and the girls could avail themselves of tennis suits in the school colors, pale gray with a crimson S. S. monogram on the blouse and “pale gray hats which are very attractive and made to order by a Northern house.”

   The diet was healthy and thoughtfully designed to nourish and strengthen, Mrs. Reade said, adding that “at eleven every morning the spring house is opened and the girls may have an unlimited supply of milk to drink.”

   The students were offered instruction in oil painting, water colors, china painting, pyrography (all right, wood-burning), violin, piano, in addition to literature, history and nature study taught by Miss Gay Blackford of Mrs. Lefebre’s School, Baltimore. 

   This regimen required one hour a day and three if desired.  Nobody seemed to desire.  By 1907, Mrs. Reade was telling her prospective students that it was not too much to ask to anyone born with a brain that they exercise it for a one hour a day, but the students were more interested in horses.

   Riding had become the major attraction.  Mrs. Reade made it plain in her brochures that she preferred the girls to ride astride and too bring along for this purpose a divided skirt, but if they insisted on the more genteel side saddle, they had better soild well be good enough to keep the horses from getting saddle sores, or not ride at all.  It was also told to them that they must always ride with some member of the family or reliable groom and that boys were never allowed to accompany them on rides, although they were always welcome for tea and tennis or to dance by the big graphophone at night, under chaperonage. 

   By 1911 the school idea was abandoned.  The establishment, grown too big for the back yard, was moved to a nearby meadow, then to the location of the present Country Club and was officially named Camp Glenrochie.

   After the death of Mary Robertson Reade and the later marriage of Willoughby Reade to Miss Nan Griffin of Bedford, shingle oak structures of various shapes and sizes began to appear on the Glenrochie hills.  There was the Captain’s cabin reserved always for the current camp directors, several multi-purpose ones here and there, and a large one housing a kitchen, a room commodious for rainy day reading, mandolin strumming, theatrical productions or whatever seemed pleasant or necessary, and a screened porch for dining.   This is the site of the Glenrochie Club House.  Down in front overlooking the riding ring and stables was a gazebo.  The patio now there overlooks the wind-up of the ninth hole and is used as the nineteenth.  The blue Clinch mountain is still there.  Behind the tennis courts was a large vegetable garden and up the path a way is still the home where Cal Black, the caretaker, lived. 

   The campers lived in a semi-circle of white tents on board floors on what was known throughout the camp’s existence as “tent row” that would along to the top of the hill to the Infirmary.

   A registered nurse was always a member of the staff, one “whose theory is that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  Perhaps because of this outlook, medical care was rarely a problem at Camp Glenrochie.  In case of emergency the brochures tell that “There is a well equipped modern hospital in Abingdon with a registered surgeon.  This hospital is a branch of the well known Johnston-Willis Sanitarium at Richmond, Virginia.

   A stage, a horse drawn vehicle, that is, was available to transport the campers from and to the depot, the uninclined horse riders to picnics, and everyone for three day stays at Glenrochie’s cabin on the Holston River.

   Here is a list of personal essentials in the first decade of Camp Glenrochie:  Two heavy blankets, six single sheets, four pillow cases, one dozen towels, raincoat or cape, Bloomers, riding skirt, preferably for cross saddle, a warm kimona, pair of stout boots, overshoes, umbrella, two short skirts, middy blouses (two dark ones) sweater or heavy coat, and two laundry bags.

   Watch next week for the next exciting chapter of Camp Glenrochie as it enters the roaring twenties and glamorous thirties.

Washington County News

Thursday, May 9, 1968

page 2

by Meade Campbell

   The oldest summer camp for girls in America was, in the beginning, an ever-growing house party at “The Meadows,” the home of Captain Frank Robertson.  As it grew in both personnel and decibels, it outgrew not only the space it occupied but the endurances of the Robertson family trying to live there.  It was kicked uphill and named Camp Glenrochie, a nice way of saying ‘this camp is going up to that rocky glen or else.’

 Willoughby Reade and his second wife, “Miss Nan,” took over.  They were people of extraordinary vigor.  Mr. Reade, a many faceted personality, had a lot of all consuming interests all going at the same time.  Among them were outdoor living, Stonehenge, horses, The Idylls of the King, and ferns.  Cars were another interest but he never learned to drive one very well.  His trips by auto around Campbell’s Hollow and up to Texas Baby are unforgettable.  People returning to find themselves on solid ground again, shakily encouraged him to go saddle his horse, which he rode very well, indeed.

   Campbell’s Hallow is now the location of the day camp for Girl Scouts.  Texas Baby was an observation tower on the top of a high hill reached by a winding path, passing “Tent row,” the Infirmary, and taking a sharp left straight up the hill through sassafras, trailing arbutus, chickadees, and indigo buntings.   

   The legend is that a pioneer family from Pennsylvania, trying to find a new trade route to Texas, made it this far, and then on that certain high hill, their newly born baby died and was buried there.  It may be so.

   Mrs. Willoughby Reade, better known as “Miss Nan” shared her husband’s interests and added some of her own.  She was an advocate of stout boots for long hikes through the woods with close observation of birds, trees and wild flowers.  On clear nights she gathered the campers together for inspection of the stars and planets, their names and movements, recalling as they watched “many of the beautiful stories of ancient times in which they had a part.”

   The girls came to camp from all over and were met by counsellors along the way, following a strategy plan that would probably confound the Pentagon.  They came from New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Memphis, New Orleans, Savannah, Atlanta, and Cincinnati, and somehow campers and counsellors all arrived together at the same time at depot square in Abingdon.  There they were met by a horse-drawn hack and were clomped off to camp. 

   The young men of the town, seeing this bevy of beauties disembark and disappear into the hills, swarmed to the site, but Mr. Reade was capable of swarming all by himself, and the barrier stood firm.  The young men were already indoctrinated to such frustration, having spent the winter months being swept away from Martha Washington and Stonewall Jackson colleges.

   A 1925 catalogue, under the hearing ‘Chaperonage’ says, “Girls are not allowed to leave camp, whether it be on horseback rides, trips to town or through woods on hikes except when accompanied by a counsellor.  At camp, no chaperonage is necessary, for girls do not come to Glenrochie to have dates, and boys and young men are not among the attractions which are offered,”  Well now, think of that.

   Camp Glenrochie had many unusual features, and perhaps its most unusual was its flatfooted refusal to advertise.  The management just let the word get around among former campers and friends that this was a pretty good place to spend a summer with a large congenial family, who welcome new members.  This way, the management was assured of getting only the best and those who would fit in.  

   It was required of the girls on any trip outside of camp that they wear the khaki or white duck hats with ‘Glenrochie’ around the crown, so they could be identified as they proper young ladies they were.  Camp Glenrochie was operated a world apart from the razzmatazz of the time and the girls had little opportunity to learn much about being fashionable flappers, or how to use rouge or make cupid-bow lips or bathtub gin.  They couldn’t even make spit curls and couldn’t have cared less.  Their parents, doubtless going about these very pursuits, were happy to have their offspring in this secure environment.  

   The camp was non-sectarian, and ministers from the town took turns holding Sunday services there.  If they desired, the campers could go to the church of their choice to either Abingdon or Bristol, accompanied by a counsellor.  A white skirt and shirtwaist with either high or low shoes were appropriate for these journeys, but girls were not permitted to walk anywhere in high heels.

   The camp costume had by now changed from hobble skirts to bloomers, black pleated ones.  Knickers were acceptable for riding, if the campers could not come provided with a riding habit or jodhpurs.  The controversial matter of the side-saddle seat was settled once and for all in 1921 when it was told that cross saddle riding, only was allowed.  Those adhering to the more graceful side saddle just didn’t know enough about it to keep the horses from getting terrible saddle sores.

   The horses, Daphne, Dotsy, Betsy, Lemon, Orange, Little Bit and others, were wintered at Sullins and Virginia Intermont college in Bristol.  In the summer they returned from School to camp as did their riders.  Daphne’s colt, Miranda, became the personal possession of Mrs. Frank Reade, but more about that later.

   Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the cuisine offered a variation from the usual hominy grits, and served treacle on buttered hot biscuits.  Theatrical productions were a great going thing and may have predated Robert Porterfield’s Barter Theater.  The girls wrote the plays, costumed themselves, and acted them out, sometimes in the big cabin, at other times by the pool or up and down the hillside.

   The beautiful blue Clinch Mountain, over there in the distance, came to be a challenge.  Because it was there, and the hardest mountain around to get to or climb up, it was the natural selection for the yearly dawn to dark picnic.  At the top of this mountain there is a terrifying strata of rock, called “The Great Pinnacles.”  The largest, jutting out into midair, is known because of its profile as “The Alligator.”  For this excursion two registered nurses were required, one to stay at Glenrochie to tent the girls and counsellors not up to the trip, and another to go along on the safari to pick up the pieces.  Somehow they always managed to get back safely and happily.

   There will be more next week as Frank and Jean take over.

Washington County News

Thursday, May 16, 1968

p. 2

The rise and decline of Camp Glenrochie…from bloomers to shirtwaists to jeans

by Meade Campbell

   The sage of Glenrochie from back yard tent to girls’ camp to country club takes a lot of telling that has been going on for two weeks.  If the class is still attending, it can cheer up.  It’s almost time for the bell.  Have patience. 

   Last week, assuming we were together, we left a gaggle of girls cavorting around the hills under the wise and lively guidance of Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby Reade.  This week’s lesson takes us through new directions to close of camp and emergence of club.

   The attire changed through these years from bloomers, or skirts and shirtwaists, to jeans and shorts, with an allowance along the way for bell bottomed beach pajamas and “one or two light summer frocks.”  Except for these few feminine foibles, campers were urged to leave fancy trappings at home and come to Glenrochie “to live in tents and not in houses, to ride on horseback and not in automobiles, to enjoy, as O. Henry has put it, “perfect rest and exercise.”  The girls sleep in the open, eat in the open and play in the open.  There is no show or pretense, no putting on of airs.  The crisp air of the mountains invigorates them, and they sleep, eat and play heartily.”

   The catalogues containing all this advice, were not mailed out indiscriminatly.  They were sent or handed to former campers and family friends whose judgment for their distribution was trusted. 

   Means of entertainment and admonitions to parents were added or subtracted as seemed needful.  Added to the rugged excursion to “The Great Pinnacles” were trips to Natural Tunnel, Devil’s Backbone, and White Top, which had a special attraction for ornithologists because of the many unusual species found there.  Feather brained birds, knowing everything about how to fly, don’t always know where they are, and some often spend summers at White Top by mistake on the migration from Guatemala.  Gip Vance, a leading authority on bird calls, claims that reaching the lashorn forest there, they say to each other, “Ye, gods, we’re in Canada already.  That was a short trip.”

   Parents of campers were told gently, then firmly, then sternly to stop sending those boxes of fudge, cakes and other goodies, not to give them more than five dollars spending money, and not to call their daughters up by long distance.  Camp Glenrochie was proud of its record of robust health and happy dispositions, and inducements to digestive upsets and homesickness were nuisances.  It was finally said that messages by phone or telegraph, except those of dire emergency, would be answered by counsellors, but emergences here would be reported promptly.

   In 1915, the mysterious but effective grapevine advertising of Camp Glenrochie reached Miss Jean Cunningham in Savannah, Georgia, one of Juliette Lowe’s original twelve Girl Scouts.  She came first as a camper, then as a counsellor, and remained as both counsellor and the wife of Mr. Reade’s son, Frank, who showed up to visit at The Meadows, to find out what his father was up to now and how Miss Cunningham were getting along.  They were married in 1922.

   Dr. Frank Robertson Reade was wont to say that he was a product of the route, THE High School, THE University and THE gutter.  This, being interpreted means that he received a Doctorate from the University of Virginia, after completing undergraduate studies, that he was editor of Corks and Curls and member of the Raven Society, that he was prepared to absorb such learning by attending Episcopal High School, and that he then became a professor of English at Georgia Tech, wrote for the Atlanta Constitution, and wound up president of Georgia Woman’s College at Valdosta.  He was a person of humor and human understanding, beloved by all ed there specialty well and knew what they were about.  The most serious injuries were banged knees or bee stings immediately tended by the resident physician, assisted by a nurse.

   The swimming pool, filled with icy water straight from White Top, was lined by shower stalls supplemented by a huge kettle of hot water and a maid in attendance.  After a summer of practice, a water pageant including exhibition diving was produced.  So was a horse show featuring classes in pairs, rings, musical chairs, and posting without stirrups.  So was a dance carnival, for which a queen was chosen, from classes in tap, ballroom, folk and interpretive dancing.  This was combined with the acting and singing talent and added up to a musical comedy, written by resident playwrights. Margaret Sullivan [sic], who came to be a star of stage and screen, found these productions her greatest interest when she was twelve years old at camp.

   To invite a spirit of friendly rival, the campers were divided into teams, the Greens and the Reds.  They vied in everything that was going on, and it all makes you wonder how many hours there were in the days out there.  A tennis ladder went on continuously, basketball, tether ball and horseshoes were played off, an archers’ tourney and a target shoot.  At the farewell banquet the camp letters “G’s” were awarded and a silver loving cup to the team wining the most.  The highest award of all was the Camp Sweater, presented to the best all around camper.  In 1948 it was won by Miss Musser Watkings, now Mrs. George Warren of Bristol.

   During the forties Camp came to be a refuge for daughters of some distinguished Americans, preoccupied by a war going on.  Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black’s daughter, Jo-Jo, and Justice William O. Douglas’ daughter, Millie, General Carl Spaatz’ daughter Carla, and Admiral Chester Nimitz’s daughter, Mary.

   Camp’s fiftieth year was celebrated in 1950 by a Jubilee banquet attended by many of the former campers.  Among them found to be a representative from five generations.

  When camp was over in August and the girls and their belongings safely dispatched, Frank and Jean stayed on to recuperate during the autumn months, returning to Valdosta in mid November.  After it closed for good in 1951 they returned with friends, horses and dogs in the spirit of the original houseparty at “The Meadows.”  Jean still visits friends here, with her constant companion, Mimi, a french poodle, trained to pull her cart around the Glenrochie Country Club golf course.

   The junior Reades, following the tradition of no pretensions, were always known to campers as “Frank and Jean.”  They became Camp Directors in 1947.  By this time the campers were daughters of mothers and granddaughters of grandmothers who had been campers before them.

   It had been Mr. Willoughby Reade’s pleasure to blast everybody out of bed at 6:45 in the morning by blowing reveille on his bugle, to lull them at night with taps and to summon them during the day by sounding other signals.  He liked that bugle.

   Frank and Jean simplified the system by installing silence bells at night and rising bells for morning, and letting the rest take care of itself.  The acceptance of two regulations were mandatory for acceptance to camp.  One was that there would be absolute quiet in the tents between the silence and rising bells and during the afternoon rest hour.  The other was implicit obedience of counsellors in charge of such sports as riding, swimming, archery, rifle, and others with any element of danger. 

   This ruling required a counsellor to be in exclusive charge of each sport and to be on the job all day.  They were usually former campers.

   The club had been an wistful idea and conversation topic for years among the socially inclined.  When it was known that Jean Reade was willing to sell the camp property, on the condition that it be used as some kind of recreational area, the dreamers and talkers went into action.  They organized a corporation and sold stock, sometimes by a badgering technique as there were as many skeptics as enthusiasts.  Once the money was in hand, grading and building began.  In 1957 the golf course, ready but rough, was there, the clubhouse almost finished, the tennis courts and newly located pool planned.

   Having accomplished all this, the original promoters perversely retreated to the old Infirmary, after Sunday afternoon golf matches, to gather with their families for picnic basket suppers, or cookouts, or a combination of both.  These outings, continued from first spring to last frost before snow, and became a tradition, although more accessible and sanitary picnic facilities were all around the club house and pool.  It lasted until the possibility of the porches and roof caving in and the children falling into the cess pool became too close to reality and the building was taken down.

   In 1959 the Glenrochie Invitational Tournament was started, an annual three day carnival for both golfers and galleries from far and near.  For the last two years visiting sportsmen have been pitching tents for this event and cooking over fires in the hills around the golf course.  Glenrochie, the club, and Glenrochie, the camp hold equal thrall. 

Memories of Camp Glenrochie
written by Michael M. Black, December 16, 2006

I was born¹ in Lexington, Kentucky.  My grandfather was a doctor and insisted that his daughter come to Lexington for her baby to be born.  We lived in Elizabeth, New Jersey for several years and in Baltimore, Maryland.  My father was an engineer for Coca-Cola which is how we later came to live in Atlanta.  My grandmother lived with us in Baltimore; however, she had been ill for an extended period.  My parents thought that my sister² and I needed to get out of the house for awhile. 

Both my father³ and brother attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia and the University of Virginia.  They played football at both places.  My father knew the Reades because Mr. Reade was teaching school⁴ at Episcopal High School.  Episcopal High School is a 100% residential school, so both Mr. and Mrs. Reade lived on the campus.  It was through Willoughby Reade⁵ and his wife⁶ that my father learned about Camp Glenrochie which their son, Frank Reade,⁷ ran in the summers.  Dr. Reade’s wife Jean⁸ was there each summer, and Dr. Reade had ladies⁹ from his school, Georgia State Womans College in Valdosta, who would also work at the camp in the summer.   

The camp was for young girls, and it was placed right next to the woods in Abingdon.  There was always the most beautiful sunsets over the mountains.  We stayed in tents with wooden bottoms and canvas sides.

The dining hall was located in a cabin.  Once while we were eating, lightening struck the building and went all the way down the side of the cabin.  Every afternoon about four o’clock, there would be a rain shower.  We could see the rain coming over the mountains, and if we were down at the tennis courts, we would start making our way back to the cabin or our tents.  We rode in a truck from the cabin to the swimming pool.  The water was freezing cold because it was spring fed.  The camp had a tower¹⁰ you could climb and see four states:  Kentucky, North Carolina, West Virginia and Tennessee. 

Both my sister and I attended the camp for four or five summers.  We loved the camp so much that our parents got us Camp Glenrochie rings and put them in our Christmas stockings.  My ring was inscribed 1934.  I was a junior counselor for one or two summers.  I really loved that place. 

1. Mrs. Waggener provided me her date of birth.

2. Betty Barrow Woolfolk

3. Mrs. Waggoner’s parents were Pichegru and Betty (Parham) Woolfolk.

4. Mr. Reade taught at Episcopal High School for 53 years.

5. Willoughby Athelstan Reade (b. July 1865 London, England, d. June 13, 1952 Bedford, Virginia)

6. Mr. Reade m. 1) Mary (Mamie) Wheeler Robertson (b. October 24, 1868 Abingdon, Virginia, d. January 11, 1919 Washington County, Virginia), daughter of Francis (Frank) Smith Robertson and Stella Wheeler, in 1894.  He m. 2) Miss Nan Griffin in March 1924.

7. Frank Robertson Reade (b. July 13, 1895 Abingdon, Virginia, d. April 10, 1957 Valdosta, Georgia)

8. Jean McDonald Cunningham Reade (b. December 22, 1899 Savannah, Georgia, d. January 28, 1988 Valdosta, Georgia).  Her parents were Charles Lamar Cunningham and Katherine Lynah.

9. Dr. Marian E. Farbar was camp physician at the camp.  Mrs. Marjorie E. Carter was a counselor and house director.

10. Texas Baby was an observation tower on the top of a high hill reached by a winding path, passing “Tent row,” the Infirmary, and taking a sharp left straight up the hill through sassafras, trailing arbutus, chickadees, and indigo buntings.

During World War II, a number of girls of the families of outstanding Army, Navy, and Air Forces officers were campers at Glenrochie. These included daughters of Admiral Nimitz, General Spaatz, General Marshall Carter (now special assistant to the Secretary of State) who married an old Glenrochie girl, Rear Admiral E. P. Moore, and Colonel L. B. Weeks.

In early days, two daughters of the late Chief Justice Edward Campbell were campers. They were Miss Jean Campbell who is now working in the rare books division of the Library of Congress, and May Campbell.

Millie Douglas, daughter of Justice Douglas, was a junior counselor at Glenrochie last summer. Justice Hugo Black’s daughter has also been a camper there.

The three Boyd sisters, famous triplet great nieces of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, were Glenrochie campers several summers. 

The three Boyd sisters, famous triplet great nieces of Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, were Glenrochie campers several summers. Elena Rolfe Boyd (Aug. 23, 1921-Mar. 19, 2001), Edith “Eadie” Bolling Boyd (Aug. 23, 1921-Dec. 16, 1996), and Mildred “Milly” Stuart Boyd (Aug. 23, 1921-July 21, 2011), daughters of Jorge Edurado Boyd and Elizabeth Bolling.  The women were known by their surname Del Rubio and were an entertainment group who enjoyed success in the 1980s. The below pictures were sent from Edith Bolling Wilson to Frank R. Reade in 1924.

by Frank R. Reade, 1957

Glenrochie camping trip and death of Papa (Frank S. Robertson) in 1926

On an August afternoon in 1926, Jim Vance came over to Glenrochie in his big truck to take a group of camp girls on an overnight trip to White Top mountain.  As we drove through the gate at The Meadows, I saw Papa sitting on the front porch.  He looked lonesome and alone.  So I asked Jim to stop the truck and wait for me there under the broad-leafed shade of a sprawling old catalpa tree, and told the girls that I wanted to go up and talk to Papa for a few minutes. 

            Papa said that he had been coughing a lot and that he felt weak and no-account, that the more he coughed the sorer his throat got and the sorer his throat got the more he coughed and the hell with it all.  He said it wasn’t any fun to live a long time after all your friends were dead,- and his eyes filled up a little.  He said I’d better not keep the girls waiting.  Anyhow, it looked like a rain making up over on the South Fork; so I’d better run along, and he hoped we would all have a good time, but he’d be damned if he saw any sense in climbing a mountain except on a horse, and not much then, -what with the timber cut out, the deer all gone to East Virginia, and nothing to shoot at but the view!

            I had never known Papa to be so depressed.  At parting, and for the first time in many years, I lifted his black skull cap and kissed him lightly on his bald head.  Then Papa looked a little embarrassed, and wanted to know if I ever proposed to grow up.

            It had been twenty-eight summers since he had held me up on his shoulders to hear my baby sister cry.

***

            We had climbed the White Top next day, all the way to the dense lashorn forest at the summit and, returning, had stopped for a moment at the edge of the cleared field where the Great Spirit had once trod when the earth was young.  The day was beautifully clear, and, as we looked out and down into the coves and valleys below, I fancied I could see the big maple trees in the backyard of The Meadows, and Uncle Archie [Robertson] sitting there on his rickety little porch.

            Then we came upon the steep, narrow path that goes down abruptly to Konnarock.  There I remembered old Jim Wilson’s story of a famous deer hunt that had swept up through Taylor’s Valley to Konnarock, before the War, – and once again I could see Papa as a young man on horseback crashing through the rhododendron, could hear the Meadows’ hounds as they streamed out before him, could feel the earth shudder as Old Glory blazed away at the end of the hunt, and tired hunters and tired hounds turned again home.

            And there at Konnarock a message was waiting for me.  Papa had died in the night. 

            For a time after supper he had sat on the front porch with some of the family who had come over from town for a visit.  In rare good humor, he had told old tales that were clothed with laughter.  After he had gone to bed, the Glenrochie girls who had not taken the White Top trip had come back from a picture show in Abingdon, had come down between the rock lilies that bordered the long front drive to The Meadows, singing.

            “Listen to the camp girls,” Papa had said.  “How sweet their voices are tonight.”

            About midnight, he rose suddenly from the bed and walked to the window.  And then, the throat cancer having eaten into an artery, he sank down quietly, and soon was gone, peacefully, as his friend Channing Price had gone, peacefully, at Chancellorsville.

***

            Just before we turned into The Meadows’ driveway, I asked Jim Vance to stop the truck for a moment, and I told the girls that Papa had died.  They were very quiet as we passed the house, and I dropped off the truck and closed the gate behind them as they went on over to Glenrochie.

            At the house, I found my own people as I had expected to find them, distressed, but behaving as though no one knew that, with Papa, The Meadows and all that it had meant for generations had died, –that his had been the last surviving spirit of a Past that once was singing gold.

            The funeral would be the following afternoon:  I am the resurrection – and the life….and then the short journey to Sinking Spring Cemetery, where the living would come again into the presence of the Dead, where Papa would lie near Mother, removed only a little way from the Unknown Confederate Dead.

            All the necessary arrangements had been made,- but my Aunt Katy was disturbed because she had not been able to find a letter from General Stuart anywhere in Papa’s den.  A week or so before, she told me, he had laughingly said that he would like to have this letter tucked in with him when the end came.  I knew where the letter was.  Mother had had it framed for Papa, and Papa had wrapped it in newspaper and had hidden it away on the top shelf of his desk, and he and I were the only ones who knew where it was.

            And so I got up and went into Papa’s den and got the letter.