“Gentlemen, there are ladies present…”
**This week’s anecdote is from a collection of stories and memories that Steve Eubank recorded for us back in 2001. This was back before Steve had begun his second tenure on Boxwell staff.**
In 1973, I brought someone to camp – my wife. We had just gotten married. Judi had never spent any time in a tent. We lived in the Hole down in Camp Murrey where married Staff lived.
One of the most interesting characters that I referred to earlier was Mr. Luke Gaffin. When I arrived at Boxwell in 1970, Mr. Gaffin was the Director of the Con-Yard at Parnell. Mr. Gaffin would sit in on our staff meetings, and I’m sure, being the wise person he was, our staff meetings were somewhat comical and hilarious to him because he was an individual who had been on the staff for many, many, many years, probably more years than some of the younger staff put together. But he was an individual that would sit underneath the cedar tree, and smoke his pipe. He had a parrot, I can’t remember the name of the pet parrot. He would sit and smoke his pipe, and that old parrot would sit on his shoulder. Of course on Sundays, he would drive the Little John for us, delivering gear to the camp sites.
I think one of the most interesting tales about Mr. Luke involved having ladies present in the dining hall. Judi, my wife, was dining hall director. And as usual, we had the boys lined up on each side of the dining hall ready to come in. Mr. Luke, along with some other of the main staff, was in the dining hall as usual, drinking coffee. I had noticed when I entered the dining hall that there were footprints on the tables. About that time, Mr. Luke looked up, and said, “Gentlemen, there are ladies present.” Well, I knew Judi was in there. But when we looked up to the very center top of the rafters of the dining hall, we saw that someone had stacked the tables during the night and had pinned a Playboy pin up at the top of the ceiling of the dining hall. Well, by that time, we had the monitors in there, and we thought kind of quick action was to go and have Flag Raising. Well, we’d already put the flag up, but at the same time, I told ‘em we’d have a little opportunity to learn how to take the flag down and put it up again. So, I got all the monitors out. We had some fishing poles that were left over from the Tennessee Preparatory School troops who had come up to camp, and we finally got the Playboy picture down. It was very funny, but at the same time, it was something that I remember Mr. Luke saying, “Gentlemen, there are ladies present.”
“Gentlemen, there are ladies present…”
Collection of Steve Eubank
Personal recordings, 2001