THE AUTHOR

PATRICIA AVERILL
I have a bachelor’s degree in history from Michigan State. My master’s and PhD in American Civilization are from the University of Pennsylvania.

My dissertation, Can the Circle Be Unbroken, analyzed country song lyrics. The readers were Kenneth Goldstein, Archie Green, and Michael Zuckerman.

I went to Battle Creek's Camp Kitanniwa (CFG) from 1951 to 1960, and worked at Hiwela (Wisc CFG) as a crafts counselor in 1963. I also went to Clear Lake (the local public school camp), Calhoun County 4-H camps, and Miniwanca.

I was active in Camp Fire in my home town and spent time at Tanawida, the local CFG day camp. I since have written a history of the community, Cameron, which looks at how a rural settlement became a multi-cultural factory town. It traces the roots of its slow demise back to changes in the 1950s.

I'm now in northern New Mexico.

THE MANUSCRIPT
I wrote the book in the late 1970s when I was a young, untenured assistant professor. The manuscript got lost when I sent it out for review. Those were the days before personal computers. I abandoned the peripatetic life of academia for what turned out to be the equally chaotic world of business. I had no time to retype.

For thirty-odd years, the carbons lay in boxes in the garage. The manuscript slowly turned into an artifact of a middle and upper-middle class culture that since has all but disappeared.

I am offering it now as a tribute to all the wonderful people who helped me with the book. Some are listed on "The People" tab. Without them the book and I wouldn’t exist.

The best camps give us a good time when we are there and change us in ways we never fully comprehend. They make us adaptable and more likely to see adversities as adventures than calamities.

1 comment:

  1. Patricia, I'm so happy that you eventually published your book, it's irreplaceable. I write a blog about songs from Camp Ajawah in Minnesota and have now linked to your site, hopeful that it will lead more people to this wonderful resource. PS - my blog is at http://whenwesing.blogspot.com/

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