Those girls could have been saved. Though this was not have saved them, even reading that the counselors could not have cell phones in the cabin is crazy. I was an overnight camp counselor in my late teens and it would have been unheard of to not have a way of communicating with the leadership at night.
I worked at a summer camp in 2023 and we were expected to only use walkies at night too. Had a kid have an allergic reaction and we had to run a mile or so to the main house since the walkies weren’t working properly.
The rationale was that since the kids weren’t allowed to use phones at night neither should we. It was so dumb.
More than dumb, that's so dangerous. I can see setting limits around screentime and modeling good behavior but nobody having a phone for emergencies???
I snuck my pink razr flip phone in to camp once when I was 12. Another cabin mate was distraught crying because she was homesick. I let her use my phone to call her parents because I felt terrible for her. She immediately was caught and it got confiscated and I got in trouble. Oh well. I didn’t care about getting in trouble but I did care about that girls wellbeing
This is really beautiful writing, the structure is so well done. I think my big takeaway was about those two cultures, one that plans and prepares and one that trusts and doesn’t look ahead:
>
“If someone builds an apartment building out of balsa wood,” Michael McCown asked me, “and that apartment complex catches fire and you die trying to save people, are you a hero?” Maybe you are. Dick’s heroism played a starring role in Mystic’s self-absolving narrative, but on the Fourth of July, it was not heroism, in particular, that Linnie McCown required. There was at play here something unspoken about different ways of being in the world, country people and city people, a world of relationships set against a world bound by rules. What Linnie needed was not courage but lawyerly caution, a camp sufficiently cowed by the legal responsibility of ensuring the safety of 550 girls that it would not dare place cabins in a known floodway and fail to evacuate them for hours after a warning. No one doubted that Dick Eastland would spend 30 minutes teaching a single girl to fish; it was with this lack of concern for clock time that he earned their devotion and also left them terribly vulnerable.
I am reminded of WEB Dubois' century old essay on the veneration of General Lee and what it says about their culture and the things they place value on:
"Lee followed Virginia. He followed Virginia not because he particularly loved slavery (although he certainly did not hate it), but because he did not have the moral courage to stand against his family and his clan. Lee hesitated and hung his head in shame, because he was asked to lead armies against human progress and Christian decency and did not dare refuse. He surrendered not to Grant, but to Negro Emancipation...
Today we can best perpetuate his memory and his nobler traits not by falsifying his moral debacle, but by explaining it to the young white south. What Lee did in 1861, other Lees are doing in 1928. They lack the moral courage to stand up for justice to the Negro because of the overwhelming public opinion of their social environment. Their fathers in the past have condoned lynching and mob violence, just as today they acquiesce in the disfranchisement of educated and worthy black citizens, provide wretchedly inadequate public schools for Negro children and endorse a public treatment of sickness, poverty and crime which disgraces civilization.
It is the punishment of the South that its Robert Lees and Jefferson Davises will always be tall, handsome and well-born. That their courage will be physical and not moral. That their leadership will be weak compliance with public opinion and never costly and unswerving revolt for justice and right."
That is also beautifully written but I think he is (perhaps on purpose) giving Lee way too much credit and way more moral ambivalence over the pride and satisfaction of conforming.
>The SUV kept beeping. “It’s because I don’t wear my seat belt,” said Claudia. “I just don’t!” When she was younger, you piled into the back of a pickup. You didn’t wear a helmet on a bike. The kids at Mystic were perfectly safe, Claudia reminded me, for 100 years. No one had fallen off a horse. No one had wandered off into the woods. “We had a big jar of peanut butter on every table,” she said. No peanut-involved deaths.
Well, shoot, how do you argue with that? Not because it is idiotic, but because an idiot will not listen.
I went to camp in the hill country as a little girl and just sobbed reading about the girls and families. The article captures what is so quintessentially Texas, but not in the way Abbott meant. The circle jerk press conference is almost comedic, the deception to parents behind Christian platitudes, blind adherence to tradition (and hegemony), the closing of ranks and "two sets of facts," all with the educated, rational minority calling out scams and cults.
I'd already read the NYT article about this a few months ago. I lived in Dallas for many years and return annually. Last fall friends had to explain what the green ribbons on so many of the trees in Highland Park were for. I'm not rich, but I've worked for and among the Dallas rich.
This article is much more upsetting than the NYT article, perhaps because there is more information now.
I'm sitting here thinking about what options the Eastlands had when considering what to do with the camp. They could have:
Closed the camp permanently, since the article indicates that they were surely multimillionaires. I wonder if this would have affected the number of lawsuits in any way. I know there is still the issue of wrongful death, but many of the parents of the girls who didn't survive are also angry at the decision to continue.
Rebuilt a new camp on land that's very high, and rebranded to that effect. Who's going to quibble with a summer camp designed with more protective elements (as long as it doesn't start to look like a prison)?
Closed the camp this year, or perhaps for a longer timeframe such as five years, to observe an official period of mourning.
I'm perplexed about their choice to open again this summer because the Eastlands now face a much more significant chance of financial ruin than any of the options I've laid out, although of course all three have financial implications and option No. 2 is expensive.
It seems like they made the worst possible choice to reopen and I can see a number of factors playing into it. Pausing to rebuild or mourn would mean that their wealthy and powerful clientele would send their children elsewhere in the meantime, possibly never to return. Descriptions of the camp and its alumnae are suggestive of a cult-like atmosphere. When you separate people from that for extended periods, the cult loses its hold. Rebuilding a new camp could suggest that the camp was unsafe. They might not want to do that for legal or reputational reasons. Lastly, the religious views of the Eastlands should be considered. I don't know them and don't intend to malign anyone by this description. But there is a certain faction of Christianity who believe that they are God's anointed who are doing God's will and therefore are never wrong. Admitting doubt or weakness of faith would be self-excommunicating. The statements they have made seem to align with those attitudes in my opinion.
anotherblackgirl | 2 hours ago
Those girls could have been saved. Though this was not have saved them, even reading that the counselors could not have cell phones in the cabin is crazy. I was an overnight camp counselor in my late teens and it would have been unheard of to not have a way of communicating with the leadership at night.
Real_Mycologist_3163 | 2 hours ago
I worked at a summer camp in 2023 and we were expected to only use walkies at night too. Had a kid have an allergic reaction and we had to run a mile or so to the main house since the walkies weren’t working properly.
The rationale was that since the kids weren’t allowed to use phones at night neither should we. It was so dumb.
ivorytowerescapee | 18 minutes ago
More than dumb, that's so dangerous. I can see setting limits around screentime and modeling good behavior but nobody having a phone for emergencies???
Any-Impression | 2 hours ago
I snuck my pink razr flip phone in to camp once when I was 12. Another cabin mate was distraught crying because she was homesick. I let her use my phone to call her parents because I felt terrible for her. She immediately was caught and it got confiscated and I got in trouble. Oh well. I didn’t care about getting in trouble but I did care about that girls wellbeing
MicellarBaptism | 40 minutes ago
You're a good egg.
Flashy-Share8186 | 2 hours ago
This is really beautiful writing, the structure is so well done. I think my big takeaway was about those two cultures, one that plans and prepares and one that trusts and doesn’t look ahead:
>
“If someone builds an apartment building out of balsa wood,” Michael McCown asked me, “and that apartment complex catches fire and you die trying to save people, are you a hero?” Maybe you are. Dick’s heroism played a starring role in Mystic’s self-absolving narrative, but on the Fourth of July, it was not heroism, in particular, that Linnie McCown required. There was at play here something unspoken about different ways of being in the world, country people and city people, a world of relationships set against a world bound by rules. What Linnie needed was not courage but lawyerly caution, a camp sufficiently cowed by the legal responsibility of ensuring the safety of 550 girls that it would not dare place cabins in a known floodway and fail to evacuate them for hours after a warning. No one doubted that Dick Eastland would spend 30 minutes teaching a single girl to fish; it was with this lack of concern for clock time that he earned their devotion and also left them terribly vulnerable.
BostonBlackCat | an hour ago
I am reminded of WEB Dubois' century old essay on the veneration of General Lee and what it says about their culture and the things they place value on:
"Lee followed Virginia. He followed Virginia not because he particularly loved slavery (although he certainly did not hate it), but because he did not have the moral courage to stand against his family and his clan. Lee hesitated and hung his head in shame, because he was asked to lead armies against human progress and Christian decency and did not dare refuse. He surrendered not to Grant, but to Negro Emancipation...
Today we can best perpetuate his memory and his nobler traits not by falsifying his moral debacle, but by explaining it to the young white south. What Lee did in 1861, other Lees are doing in 1928. They lack the moral courage to stand up for justice to the Negro because of the overwhelming public opinion of their social environment. Their fathers in the past have condoned lynching and mob violence, just as today they acquiesce in the disfranchisement of educated and worthy black citizens, provide wretchedly inadequate public schools for Negro children and endorse a public treatment of sickness, poverty and crime which disgraces civilization.
It is the punishment of the South that its Robert Lees and Jefferson Davises will always be tall, handsome and well-born. That their courage will be physical and not moral. That their leadership will be weak compliance with public opinion and never costly and unswerving revolt for justice and right."
Flashy-Share8186 | 40 minutes ago
That is also beautifully written but I think he is (perhaps on purpose) giving Lee way too much credit and way more moral ambivalence over the pride and satisfaction of conforming.
spiritussima | an hour ago
>The SUV kept beeping. “It’s because I don’t wear my seat belt,” said Claudia. “I just don’t!” When she was younger, you piled into the back of a pickup. You didn’t wear a helmet on a bike. The kids at Mystic were perfectly safe, Claudia reminded me, for 100 years. No one had fallen off a horse. No one had wandered off into the woods. “We had a big jar of peanut butter on every table,” she said. No peanut-involved deaths.
Well, shoot, how do you argue with that? Not because it is idiotic, but because an idiot will not listen.
[OP] MeganGrace | 3 hours ago
Archive Link
spiritussima | an hour ago
Excellent, well-rounded article.
I went to camp in the hill country as a little girl and just sobbed reading about the girls and families. The article captures what is so quintessentially Texas, but not in the way Abbott meant. The circle jerk press conference is almost comedic, the deception to parents behind Christian platitudes, blind adherence to tradition (and hegemony), the closing of ranks and "two sets of facts," all with the educated, rational minority calling out scams and cults.
hmmmweirdIguess | an hour ago
I'd already read the NYT article about this a few months ago. I lived in Dallas for many years and return annually. Last fall friends had to explain what the green ribbons on so many of the trees in Highland Park were for. I'm not rich, but I've worked for and among the Dallas rich.
This article is much more upsetting than the NYT article, perhaps because there is more information now.
I'm sitting here thinking about what options the Eastlands had when considering what to do with the camp. They could have:
I'm perplexed about their choice to open again this summer because the Eastlands now face a much more significant chance of financial ruin than any of the options I've laid out, although of course all three have financial implications and option No. 2 is expensive.
papillion1 | 31 minutes ago
It seems like they made the worst possible choice to reopen and I can see a number of factors playing into it. Pausing to rebuild or mourn would mean that their wealthy and powerful clientele would send their children elsewhere in the meantime, possibly never to return. Descriptions of the camp and its alumnae are suggestive of a cult-like atmosphere. When you separate people from that for extended periods, the cult loses its hold. Rebuilding a new camp could suggest that the camp was unsafe. They might not want to do that for legal or reputational reasons. Lastly, the religious views of the Eastlands should be considered. I don't know them and don't intend to malign anyone by this description. But there is a certain faction of Christianity who believe that they are God's anointed who are doing God's will and therefore are never wrong. Admitting doubt or weakness of faith would be self-excommunicating. The statements they have made seem to align with those attitudes in my opinion.