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Essayist Jim Fisher remembers the joys of summer camp and tells of efforts to revive the YMCA's now-defunct Camp Gravois.

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JIM FISHER: Summer and summer camp, kids roughing it for two weeks. New friends, hikes and swimming, stuff to do. Part of the American scene. But then there's this-a ghost camp in the Missouri Ozarks. Camp Gravois was a booming YMCA camp for 65 years until it shut down in 1988. Thousands of children once filled it with raucous noise, ghost stories, and belly buster dives! All gone. Replaced by weeds and empty cabins, a rotting dock and trash, a deserted mess hall and old bed frames, even moss on the roof.

When it closed, the camp joined hundreds of other traditional summer camps around the country, which over the past two decades have shut their gates for a myriad of reasons-fear of liability suits, financial losses, competition from church camps. There's been a move to urban day camping, where kids learn sports or dance, or explore the world around it through science experiments. And there's been a sea change in attitude. "Camping has an image of being just too much work," a Y official wrote just before this camp closed. "Not so," says R. J. Walker, who, when he has the chance, drives 150 miles from Kansas City, walks the hills and hollers and remembers all the fun. He can even recall the camp song.

R. J. WALKER: (singing) The biscuits here at Gravois, they say are mighty fine. One fell off the table and killed a friend of mine.

JIM FISHER: When he was nine, Walker arrived as a virtual poster boy, all that camps like Gravois were aiming at. A minority-he's part American-Indian-from a broken home-a boy on the edge of his teenage years lacing that one prerequisite-confidence-but camp changed all that.

R. J. WALKER: It builds your self-esteem. There's no doubt about it. You come down here; you're meeting a lot of people; it helps you gain confidence. There's arts and crafts. You're learning. You're learning riflery-there's drama-and whenever you're learning anything like this on a daily basis, it helps you have more confidence; you always go home from camp with more confidence.

JIM FISHER: Corny as it sounds, Walker bought into the camp philosophy--the last line of which is still on the mess hall wall-"I am third." The first two lines are "God is first, the other fellow is second."

R. J. WALKER: You remember the first time we were here there was water.

JIM FISHER: It worked for Walker. He had his wild years, but he's settled down. These days he's married, has a young child, and owns a home in the suburbs. But a couple of years ago he stopped by Camp Gravois to visit.

R. J. WALKER: I just dropped in thinking that a camp would be in session. It was heartbreaking just to come in and see a place that used to be so alive, not be what it was. This camp should be open, more than at this time than ever, since it began in 1923.

JIM FISHER: Unlike most of us, who'd probably just shake our heads, Walker never has forgotten the "I am third" admonition. Believe it or not, he's trying to reclaim the land from the developer who bought it from the Y a couple of years ago. Walker admits he's probably spitting in the wind.

R .J. WALKER: My objective is to see the camp put in the hands of someone that's going to keep it a camp for kids.

JIM FISHER: But he's made his own fund-raising deal. He's sent it to people whose names he's called from old attendance lists at the camp, some of whom are now movers and shakers, and have big bucks. He's gotten some publicity. One woman from California who heard about him sent along 50 bucks.

R. J. WALKER: With all the violence and stuff going on with kids, why wouldn't this camp be something special to help kids?

JIM FISHER: Who knows? In fact, who knows how that old sign on the mess hall wall managed to survive all these years?

I'm Jim Fisher.

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