My Final Hero Character Sketch

“Why Salubrious?” I asked my old camp counselor, Christopher Stephens.

“I wanted a name that people wouldn’t know what it meant so it forced them to go to the dictionary- so it forced them to be educated,” he responded, matter-of-factly.

He had always been big on education. It was one of the most important things to him about people- kids especially. Respect from kids was essential behavior to him too.

“I’ve always said I would rather have a bunch of stupid kids who were nice to each other than a bunch of intelligent kids who were jerks to each other.” And he did always say that. He deprecated petulant kids. It was his number one rule for all of us kids at his summer camp. He engraved it in our minds. Respect. At the time, of course, being six years old, we did not have the depth to be able to comprehend just how valuable of an attribute it would be. Chris, however, taught us well. He wasn’t just a summer camp head counselor to us, he was the epitome of what to do with our summer days.

His 6”5, rounded like a fitter Humpty Dumpty, his body was topped with a head of fluffy sandy, short gold hair. He took life lightly; he even used to wear a paper sign saying ‘don’t feed the bear’ as a joke not to let him eat your food during lunch. He had a huge heart and an even bigger love for kids, and we loved him just as much.

Through the camp, he gave us more than the joy of learning to play sports and how to stay together on field trips. He gave us friendships that would last us our lifetime. Seven summers spent bonding with friends closer than we thought imaginable.

“I hated summer camp when I was a kid,” he slurped the last splash of water from his tall, sweating glass of water and rattled the ice cubes around with the tip of his straw, “but there was one camp that I went to, for one summer, and I loved it. Then it closed. It was like no other camp I had been to before. The camp was gone, but the memory of the joy I took away from it stuck with me.”

I smiled. There were so many irreplaceable memories and experiences with Camp Salubrious over the years. We were a big happy family- every single one of us. For seven years we would tediously deal with school, counting down the days until we could go back to camp and spend the hot summer days with our best friends.

“Did you take any precautions before opening Camp Salubrious? Weren’t there risks that needed to be acknowledged?” I always wondered if he had any apprehensions to opening an individual camp.

“I kind of just jumped in full force. It was a lot of money up front- you have to buy things before you know if any kids are coming to the camp. Liability of the kids is huge. I wasn’t just some counselor working for the local YMCA. I was the owner of the entire camp. I was responsible for every single kid. If anything happened, it was all on me,” he picked up his water glass again.

“But how did you do it?” I asked, marveling at just how efficacious his camp ended up being and how significantly his impact was on my life and the person I am today, “How did you create the perfect summer milieu?”

“I just remembered what I hated about all those other summer camps when I was a kid, and made sure I omitted them from the way I ran mine,” he smiled, doubtlessly proud of himself, as he adjusted his tall, fuzzy, black and white Mickey Mouse hat.

The great pleasure his escape of a camp brought us was beyond anything we had experienced, and ever will experience. Now that the camp is closed, our memories and friendships are all we have left of what was the best summer camp in the world.