It has been nearly 80 years since David S. Rosenthal first walked the root-covered path from his Camp Alton bunk to Lake Winnipesaukee, but the memories still glimmer in his dreams.
“Just walking to the beach every afternoon, every morning was an experience I’ll always remember,” said Rosenthal, who is 83. “I dream about the experiences up on the athletic fields, playing tennis, basketball, volleyball, working in the nature house.”
And when he wakes up and walks about the campus of NewBridge on the Charles in Dedham, where he and his wife, Judy, have lived since 2009, he might just run into one of his bunkmates.
A half-dozen Alton alumni have made the continuing care community in Dedham their home. In a Zoom call, Rosenthal joined Peter Shapiro in reminiscing about their camp days and reflecting on why their long-ago summers on that 60-acre stretch of New Hampshire still figure so large in their lives.
“It’s eight weeks living together, playing together, working together, singing together, eating together,” Rosenthal said.
“And multiply that by five or 10 years [as campers and counselors], and we’d see each other off and on after camp was over,” added Shapiro, who is 85. “We all went off on our own lives, but we seem to come back together again.”
Shapiro, who attended the camp for a decade beginning in 1945, recalls Rosenthal’s dad welcoming him.
“David’s father was the one who helped me take my trunk down to the bunk,” he said, “and it was great from then on.”
Rosenthal’s father was invited to join the staff of the camp in 1942 by fellow Boston schoolteacher Philip Marson, who had opened Alton five years before. Four-year-old David stayed with his parents their first summer while his older brother started right in as a camper.
World War II barely intruded on camp life, aside from occasional static-filled radio reports. Counselor claims of Japanese submarines patrolling Winnipesaukee did not deter campers from soaping up in the lake for their Sunday morning baths (at the time, the camp had no showers) or skinny-dipping at night. The closest the campers came to military action were snipe hunts and the annual flag rush.
To this day, Rosenthal cannot say what a snipe is, but he can tell you how to hunt these creatures of camp lore. “We would have to cover our faces and go out in the middle of the night and put rocks together to make a noise so we would wake up the snipes” for the counselors to catch, he said.
The flag rush was another Alton tradition, the climax of a season-long rivalry that pitted one half of the camp, the Grays, against the other, the Greens. Each side competed for points in everything from swimming to singing to cleaning their bunks. The flag rush called for a combination of strategy, stealth, and speed, as each team invaded the other’s territory to capture pennants while trying to thwart attacks on their own. Think Capture the Flag over an area equal to three football fields.
But camaraderie, not competition, made the most lasting impression on Rosenthal and Shapiro. Campers looked after one another; no one was bullied.
“Camp taught me to learn to live with people,” Rosenthal said.
The NewBridge-Alton connection is not surprising. Both NewBridge’s parent organization, Hebrew SeniorLife, and Camp Alton have Jewish roots.
Rosenthal, who was raised in a largely Jewish section of Roxbury, recalled being chased by gentiles when he ventured outside the neighborhood. “At camp, I felt very safe in the culture of being with other Jewish kids,” he said. “At home, we were a minority; here we were the majority.”
Shapiro grew up in Concord, N.H., where “there were like six Jewish kids in the whole temple.” At camp, he said, “I got a different perspective on what Judaism means.”
Aside from Friday night services and a daily Bible reading, Camp Alton did not emphasize religion. Still, Shapiro, who made his career as a lawyer in Concord and became a lay leader in the Reform movement, points to studies that link Jewish camps to lifelong engagement in the Jewish community.
When camp counselors visited nearby Wolfeboro, they took on “town names” to disguise their religion. “My name was David Stanley,” said Rosenthal, who simply dropped his surname.
At the same time, Alton campers were welcome at Marist, a Catholic camp about 35 miles away on Ossipee Lake. The camps regularly competed in swimming, track, and baseball. “Brother Tim was terrific,” Rosenthal said of the Marist coach.
Beyond sports, campers performed concerts and staged plays. With Rosenthal on sax, his father on drums, and others on woodwinds and strings, “We played symphonies,” Rosenthal said. “Music became a real specialty.” As did theater, including a lakeside performance of “Moby Dick,” complete with a mock whale.
Rosenthal also made a name for himself as a wrestler — or, more accurately, a nickname: Young Bull Walton, after a pro wrestler of the era.
Rosenthal attended Alton first as a camper and then a counselor from 1942 through 1956. He served as camp doctor from 1976 to 1992, when the camp closed because of changing demographics and high maintenance costs. His daughter became the first counselor in training at Alton and later directed waterfront activities.
Like Rosenthal, Shapiro occasionally has run into Alton alum in his professional life.
“I was sitting in court one day as a special master, and this fellow comes in and introduces himself. I said, ‘You went to Camp Alton, and you were the guy who stopped in the middle of a track meet to tie your shoes,’” Shapiro recalled, adding that three campers raced past him.
“He said, ‘Oh my God, I hope you don’t hold that against me.’
“I said, ‘No, don’t worry, you were on the other side.’”
Steve Maas can be reached at stevenmaas@comcast.net.
