NEIGHBORS by Andria Frankfort, staff writer
Summer Nights From camp crush to a lifetime
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f there were ever a blueprint for summer romance, it would have to be summer camp. No parents! No school! No rules! Okay, maybe rules, but the kind of rules that encourage kids to step outside their comfort zones and try new things. It just works. At least for the summer. But not all camp romances cool with the temperatures. Sometimes, love strikes and stays. Every summer growing up, Debbie (Forkowitz) and Arturo Karakowsky attended Camp Young Judaea in Wimberley. Debbie, a recently retired attorney, remembers being just 6 or 7 when she left her home and family in Waxahachie to spend a few weeks as a camper. Arturo, a financial advisor, started camp when he was just slightly older that that, maybe 10 or 11, as one of a large group of Mexican children making the trip to Wimberley from Monterrey. But Debbie and Arturo attended different summer sessions, so they never knew each other as campers. Fast-forward several summers to 2001, when the two returned to Young Judaea as high school graduates and counselors. “We became really good friends for years,” Debbie says. “Every single summer, we returned back to camp because we were both passionate about it.” It took them four years of summering together as counselors, but finally the friends began dating. “I think over the years we had different times when we were both interested, but someone always had a boyfriend or a girlfriend,” Debbie says. “That summer after we graduated from college [in 2005] was just a good time for us to start dating.” The two spent a semester together at The University of Texas at Austin, he as an exchange student and she in law school, and then they dated long-distance until becoming engaged in 2007. Camp continued to play an integral role in Debbie and Arturo’s life together. “If you go to summer camp every year, the closest relationships in your life will usually be connected to camp in some way,” Debbie says. “For me it’s just natural that my husband is a part of that community. “We knew each other’s best friends and exes. We became close a lot younger than marriage
CAMP CONTINUED At top: Debbie and Arturo Karakowsky met when the two were counselors at Camp Young Judaea (inset photo). Fifteen years later, they are married with three children (from left): Noa, Liv and Eli. Bottom photo: Matt and Christina Buzby met as counselors at Camp Cho-Yeh in Livingston. Now they have a 1 year old, Brooks, and are expecting another baby.
age, so it fostered a different kind of relationship before we ever entered a romantic relationship. By the time we started dating we were probably already in love.” Ali (Donelson) and Ben Monk might say the same thing. The two met their first year working on the summer staff at Camp Ozark in 2009 (they both still work for the camp). Ben was a longtime camper, and it was Ali’s first experience with the camp. “We met at staff orientation and became really good friends,” Ben says. “We continued to be friends when Ali graduated [college] and began
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working [at the camp] full-time. Once I graduated and began working there full-time we continued to be friends.” “We were like best friends,” Ali says. “We worked on the same team, so we’d work together all year and go to camp together all summer. I actually realized I had a crush on him over Christmas break of year six. After that, I talked to him in the office and said, ‘Maybe we should think about this.’” “It took a little while for me to figure things out,” Ben says. “We went on our first date in April 2014.”