Jete

June 13, 2005




A letter to Yonahlossee Sisters everywhere


I had been waiting for your messages. When we've sung Let There Be Peace on Earth at the close of church services, I've felt it a sign and come home expecting word. Now Jete is released, freed, and I am so happy for her and for Heaven.

Making cucumber sandwiches for coffee hour yesterday after hearing from you. I told Jay I hoped we'd sing a camp hymn at church. He said what's a camp hymn. I said it's a hymn hand-penned on scrolled brown wrapping paper and sung on Sunday mornings by hundreds of girls in navy blue shorts and white shirts sitting on the well-oiled floor and benches in sunlight streaming through the windows of Main Cabin. I said it's Holy, Holy, Holy or All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name or This is My Father's World . I said it's Fairest Lord Jesus (which I've requested for my service), but we never sing Fairest Lord Jesus at our church.

And yesterday as the little scrubbed children walked down the aisle for their time with the preacher, the guest organist played Fairest Lord Jesus.

A sendoff! A sign! The end of a marvelous era, but all is well. Love lives.

Awash in cucumbers, I was telling Jay about Jete and the tight ship she ran to ensure our safety. What responsibility, to take girls from hundreds of families and promise their parents not only fun and friendship and learning but 24/7 protection. I told him about Jete's cabin roll call at every gathering, the assigned table system in the Dining Hall, the clipboard, the gray pedal pushers and plaid jacket, the balanced program, Ollie with those undershirts tucked under his "ahm."

I told him about the time Jete called my name in a list of girls to see after assembly. Instead of a special trip, which I'd assumed, she told us to go straight to the shower "with shampoo!" and report back to her when we were clean.

At another assembly, the year I was in Rocky Roost and Patty was in Shangri, Jete said she wanted to see the Neblett sisters in her office. We sat on that day bed (was there a hunter green spread?) and she told me gently that my best friend in Tampa had been killed in a car accident. She had thoughtfully told Patty the day before to prepare her to help me with the loss.

That was the same year that Patty came to Rocky Roost to tell me she was leaving on a canoe trip to shoot the rapids. Kathryn Clewis said, "With a gun?"

And the year we were in Lakeview, the post-Paradise solution for those of us who couldn't stop coming, we trapped a bat in a plastic cookie box and took it to Jete's office after Evening Program, when we were supposed to be readying for Taps. She was not pleased and told us in no uncertain terms to get out of her office and back to our cabin. I was terrified and ready to run, but Donna Kirtley, our leader, said, "Yes ma'am, but we'd like our box back."

Mama was Tampa's camp representative and she spent hours on that phone recruiting campers. Activity was highest around the time of Jete's visit to show the movies. She stayed at our house many years and also at Helen Leonard's. Old campers and prospectives attended the movie parties (there were always two) and Jete would reverse the film to show girls springing from the water onto the diving board, arrows returning to their bows, horses taking the jumps backward. We never tired of the trick.

The year I was in Nest, I went to choir practice in The Castle. Jete asked me what I'd done that morning. I told her that to qualify for trips, I'd swum back and forth to "that dam thing" in the lake. She nearly fell off the couch laughing and I didn't know what I'd said that was funny.

Camp did increase my vocabulary: I remember Judy O'Connell saying that French kissing was a sin, and I'd never heard of French kissing; and in Igloo JoEllen Forbes told me about a girl in Tarboro who was a whore (in my head I pictured "hoar") and after she roughly explained the meaning, I told her we didn't have that word in Tampa. And then there was the illicit copy of "Peyton Place" circulating through Shangri.

I loved how Jete said the word "tournament." I can hear her voice now, see that fabulous smile, recall her remarkable memory not only for our names and situations but for our children's, whom she hadn't even met. I feel her love that has embraced me for 50 years. For every moment of every year at camp, she set the tone. She lives - and will always! - in our Yonahlossee hearts.

Thank you, Lucy (Lane Riddle), for representing us Thursday at her service. You have a million of us holding you up. Tuscarora chief, Pow Wow secretary and Bobber Extraordinaire, you have been a post-camp champ as well, the mother of all Yonahlossee girls as you've set the stage for years of reunions with Jete.

Suzy (McCain Seraphine-Kimel), thank you so much for the obituary this morning and for your Taps yesterday. I tried "I'm Not Gonna' Cry, I'm Not Gonna' Cry," but, as usual, it didn't work.

May the Spirit of Christ be the Spirit of Yonahlossee.

With CY love ...

Jane Neblett Tims (CY 1956-62)



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