Camp Alton Message Board

Here's a news flash that I know all senior Altonites have been awaiting. Charles C. Bergman is alive and well and living in New York City!!

Last Friday, I was taking my last noon-time run along the Burlington waterfront before moving on to a new assignment to the north. I detoured from my usual path to experience the waterfront boardwalk one last time ... and ran smack into Charlie. (I'm unsure of Charlie's entire Alton history; he was a camper before I was born. But in 1957, he was the director of the-most-successful-camper-produced-play-of-its-time, Mr. Roberts).

The years have been good to Charlie. Except for a touch of gray in his locks. he is largely the same.

Turns out that Charlie is -- and has been for 18 years -- President and Chairman of The Pollack-Krasner Foundation (founded, he told me, by Jackson Pollack's widow). And get this! Charlie's job is to give away money, gobs and gobs of money. The only catch is that the money is in the form of grants to visual artists.

So get out and dust off your old shop projects, campers, and get those grant apps in!

kuper@mail.crt.state.vt.us

But I too am/was, like Michael, quite senior.

I did not, however, possess the criteria to participate in "Mr. Roberts", but, if I am not mistaken, Judge Michael's cousin played a leading role.

Similarly coincidentally, about a year ago I accompanied my Moms to a medical consultation at her doctor's office here in Manhattan on East 70th Street. In walked Charlie Bergman who indeed had not changed [much] in 4+ decades. I reminded him of his all-star directorship as well as the story he told of a night of hell-raising as a student [Harvard, I firmly believe] where the next morning the participants had to raise the the necessary cash to pay for the property damage as well as apportion it in accordance with each vilde chaya's responsibility. They came to a consensus, Charlie revealed to us on the bleachers during the Eisenhower presidency, [Incidentally, Charlie had no recollection of either the incident or having related it - or so he claimed during his medical]. But back then Charlie attributed the success of the negotiations in large part [if not solely] to the quantity of pre-noon Bloody Marys he and the other miscreants had then been downing.

I think, however, a more significant image of Charlie stems from the "Educational Theory" debates [actually, inter-changes] he had with our late, beloved Chief on "Discussion Night", which, as I recall, in those days were Thursday nights. [After "Swallowing" the lake on Trip Days, we could easily have bought into anything!]

Those were the days, and I keep thinking that the more minutiae I can recall and relate, the greater will be the chance that we can all go back again. [Fat chance!]

Let me wish our Alton family [and extensions thereof] a meaningful New Year [5763 already?] of health and happiness and a [long overdue] world of peace.

L'Shanah Tovah T'katavu,

"Rabbi" Brecker

mark@lgpltd.com