Awards Setting up for reunion weekend offered another opportunity to unearth all the treasures we have accumulated through the years—old awards (check out the cool felt versions pictured above from the 1960s!), trophies, pictures, yearbooks, and letters.
From the Kiniya Archives
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his year’s greatest treasure at Kiniya (aside from the incredible campers we served!) came in the form of a brown box package delivery in early spring. Inside it was a note and photo from its sender, the daughter of a Kiniya alum who spent summers on the shores of Lake Champlain from 1927-1929. Eighty-nine community members were pictured, with Helen Van Buren standing proudly in the center of them all. Each person was here for eight full weeks, the names of every one handwritten in black ink on the back of the photograph. One community for the entire summer: fully, wholly, completely. As we all know, traditions change over time. No summer is like the one before it, and no summer will be just like the ones to come. We come together each summer as different humans. Different from each other. Different from the way we were a year ago, with different things that excite us, charge us, fuel us, and challenge us. But the meaning behind treasures like pins and kiwis we acquire from Camp lasts long beyond the time we’re here. More often than not, the friendships and gifts that emerge from any given summer are passed onto the next, marking the shared culture we cherish.
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Kiniya Pin The 1927 all-camp photo arrived with another incredible gem—the camper pin from that very same year. Having never seen this pin or any other version of it, we loved sharing it with our campers this summer, a relic once treasured by a sister camper from a long ago summer. During our first Sunday Service Initiative, each one of us held it and passed it with love from one community member to another.
campdudley.org
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