Campers savor memories

By: Monica Young | Winston-Salem Journal
Published: April 26, 2011

WALKERTOWN — The memories forged at long-closed Camp Betty Hastings came alive Monday as about 20 people reminisced, sang camp songs and shared memorabilia that will contribute to a book under way about Walkertown's history.

The Rev. Ellen Yarborough, a former director of the YWCA camp, made s'mores, a camping favorite that consists of a roasted marshmallow with a piece of chocolate squished between two graham cracker crusts.

With no campfire, she used the microwave during the potluck luncheon at the Walkertown Area Historical Society house on Church Street.

But the confection came out a little undercooked, and Yarborough held it up to the group that had assembled.

"This isn't a s'more. It's a s'maybe," Yarborough said to laughter from the group.

Besides giving generations of young women an outdoors experience, the YWCA camp played an important role in early racial integration. The camp brought black women and white women and their daughters together long before that was the norm, Yarborough said.

The enthusiastic camp alumni met for the luncheon after Jane Morris began researching the camp as part of a book to be published by Arcadia Press. The luncheon was sponsored by the historical society.

When Morris was a child, she spent a week at the camp near Walkertown. She agreed to research the camp but was having trouble finding enough information.

She contacted Yarborough, who was camp director in 1962-63 and again in 1972-73. Yarborough invited Morris to visit with her and others at Arbor Acres retirement community who remembered the camp.

As Yarborough began contacting camp friends, the list of camp alumni grew and led to the reunion potluck.

The camp's history covers so many subjects, Yarborough said.

"The YWCA was active in school integration," she said, "and we integrated camp during the civil-rights movement. We had mother-daughter sleepovers with black and white women. We sponsored interracial dinner groups."

Florence Corpening, who has served as the YWCA's chief executive officer for the past 16 years, said the camp was progressive during a segregated time.

"There are pictures of African-American and Caucasian girls camping together in the 1950s," Corpening said. "Erasing racism has been part of our organization's mission for many, many years."

The 50-acre camp opened in 1933 with land donated by Fred Hutchins. The camp was named after Bettie (spelled differently than it is now) Hastings, a former YWCA president who was born in Walkertown and helped develop the camp in the midst of the Great Depression. It was the largest, best-equipped YWCA in the Southeast when it was built.

In 1985, the camp was sold to help reduce $340,000 in debt from construction costs at the YWCA, according to articles in the Winston-Salem Journal at the time. The camp had come under criticism in the summer of 1984 after a 16-year-old camp counselor was charged with molesting children there, according to Journal articles.

The camp was sold to Velma and Billy Simmons, whose daughter's Girl Scout troop had visited the camp every summer. Velma Simmons said the property remains much as it was during its camp days, although it's private property and is closed to the public.

Luncheon participants were excited to tell their camp stories.

Molly Rawls, the photograph collection librarian at the Forsyth County Public Library, attended camp as a young girl. She brought copies of library photos and some from her own collection showing campers performing in the traditional Aquacade, an elaborate end-of-camp pageant held on the lake.

Pat Sisson brought her yellow vinyl "sit-upon" that she sewed together after stuffing it with newspapers in the 1960s.

"There's no telling what news we would find in there," Sisson said as she thought about opening the yellow cushion.