**I have entered the final two weeks of my campaign and am quite short of my goal. Please remember any sized contribution brings my closer to my goal. I’ll spend the next two weeks showing you why you should contribute!**

Meet the indomitable Danny Waltman. Danny has one of the most truly interesting stories of just about any Boxwell staff member I have met. At the 2014 Staff Reunion, Danny was given an award for the most positions held of any staff member. The interview reflected that!

Danny worked at Craig and Stahlman. As OA Representative, he was also Reservation staff. He worked in the Trading Post and with First Year Campers. He worked on the Boat Harbor. He worked in the Activity Yard and as the AY Director. He was a Program Director. And if all this wasn’t enough, he met his wife at Boxwell. She was working on CubWorld staff!

I interviewed Danny on July 16, 2018. This interview lasted 3 hours. But it was clear there was more to discuss, so I gave Danny a recorder and asked him to do more. Danny recorded over another hour on his own!

Both recordings are interviews I need transcribed, which is why I come to you today.

Danny’s interview not only provides great insight into how multiple positions on Boxwell staff work, but shows the realities of the modern camp. If a staff member can find love at camp, what else can be said?

Please, help me reach my goal. Contribute to the Boxwell Interview Transcription Project: https://www.gofundme.com/boxwell-history-transcription-project to get this interview transcribed so I can produce a history of Camp Boxwell for its centennial in 2021.

Danny Waltman at my home for our interview, July 16, 2018. He then recorded more on his own!

**I have entered the final two weeks of my campaign and am still short of my goal. Please remember any sized contribution brings my closer to my goal. I’ll spend the next two weeks showing you why you should contribute!**

Say hello to Christy Willhite Bryan. Yes, Christy is the daughter of Tom Willhite. But equally important, Christy was also the program director at family camp Camp Murrey in its waning days, basically the 1980s until it’s close in 1994. In our interview, we discussed Camp Murrey and how it operated. We also discussed Tom and how much he actually knew about staff shenanigans. The answer? Apparently quite a bit.

I interviewed Christy twice. The first time, I confess, I was new to digital recorders and I just didn’t get the interview! The second attempt was on October 9, 2015 and was, in my opinion, the better conversation.

The interview ran almost an hour and a half and and is yet another example of one that needs to be transcribed. As you can see, the amount of information here is legion!

Christy’s interview is not just important because of what she knew about what Tom knew, but because the changes at Camp Murrey speak (in part) to changing gender expectations regarding women in the 1980s and 1990s. The idea that a wife would take the kids and follow her husband out to camp had seemed ahead of its time in the 1960s now seemed antiquated and archaic (if not downright sexist) by the 1980s and 1990s.

Please, help me reach my goal. Contribute to the Boxwell Interview Transcription Project: https://www.gofundme.com/boxwell-history-transcription-project to get this interview transcribed so I can produce a history of Camp Boxwell for its centennial in 2021.

Christy Willhite Bryan at our first interview, September 2015.

**I have entered the final two weeks of my campaign and am still short of my goal. Please remember any size contribution brings my closer to my goal. I’ll spend the next two weeks showing you why you should contribute!**

Another legend, the modern COPE master, Lance Ussery. Lance joined camp staff in the early 1980s as a “Jerry’s kid”–one of Jerry Barnett’s youth staff. Lance worked Craig and Parnell staff in the 1980s. He also went on to spend time on the volunteer staffs of Brownsea (youth leader training) and Woodbadge (adult leader training).

But what most people today know Lance for was his time on COPE–the High Adventure ropes and team-building course. Lance served as COPE Director for approximately a decade before going on to start his own ropes course inspection company. He took his experience with Boxwell and literally made it his life’s work.

Lance is my most recent interview. We interviewed in February of this year when Lance was at Boxwell for a pre-camp inspection. The interview–at least the recorded parts–ran over two and a half hours.

The interview with Lance needs to be transcribed.

Lance’s time with Boxwell demonstrates the way the camp’s mission evolved into more than a traditional advancement program. Leadership training and high adventure grew to be important parts of the story, as did new ways of creating revenue streams. These are important parts to an increasingly complex story and speaks to how non-profits survive in the modern world. This is part of the story I need to tell.

Please, help me reach my goal. Contribute to the Boxwell Interview Transcription Project: https://www.gofundme.com/boxwell-history-transcription-project to get this interview transcribed so I can produce a history of Camp Boxwell for its centennial in 2021.

Lance Ussery in the cooks’ cabin at Stahlman, February 12, 2019

**I have entered the final two weeks of my campaign and am still short of my goal. Please remember any sized contribution brings my closer to my goal. I’ll spend the next two weeks showing you why you should contribute!**

Here he is: the man, the legend, Jerry Barnett. Jerry began at Camp Stahlman in 1964, worked for a few years, went off to Vietnam, and came back to camp briefly in 1970 and 1971. He went out in the world and returned to camp in 1980 as Parnell’s Activity Yard Director.

But it is his run from 1981 to 1992 as the Parnell/Craig Program Director for which Jerry is most known. Along with Tom Willhite and Ernie Ragsdale, Jerry defined the “middle era” of Old Hickory Boxwell.

I interviewed Jerry on November 5, 2016. We spoke about his time in the 1960s, his time as Kitchen Director, working the Commissioner system, Ward Akers, Ed Human, Ernie Ragsdale, a host of other characters, and of course his run as Program Director.

The interview ran almost four hours and needs to be transcribed. Indeed, since this interview, Jerry and I also toured the sites for the Linton Boxwell and the Narrows of the Harpeth Boxwells together; these were also recorded journeys that should be transcribed.

Part of what makes Jerry’s story so intriguing is how it follows the arc of baby boomers. Baby boomers overwhelmed Boxwell in the 1960s and early 1970s. So impactful was the experience, several returned in later years or were involved in other aspects Council politics and program. The story of Boxwell can’t be told without the baby boomers and it is part of the story I want to tell.

Please, help me reach my goal. Contribute to the Boxwell Interview Transcription Project: https://www.gofundme.com/boxwell-history-transcription-project to get this interview transcribed so I can produce a history of Camp Boxwell for its centennial in 2021.

Jerry Barnett at his home, November 2016

**I have entered the final two weeks of my campaign and am quite short of my goal. Please remember any sized contribution brings my closer to my goal. I’ll spend the next two weeks showing you why you should contribute!**

Allow me to introduce Carl Adkins. Carl Adkins was Boxwell’s Reservation Director from 2004 to 2017, making him the second longest serving Reservation Director at Old Hickory Boxwell. If you want to understand the modern camp, this is the man to explain it.

I interviewed Carl on November 15, 2017. We spoke about his time working with Ernie Ragsdale, his time working in Council Finance, the challenges of being Reservation Director, as well as a host of characters and really just simple mechanics about how and why things work the way they do.

To be honest, it was a much more frank and honest conversation than I had expected! Carl and I spoke for almost 2 solid hours. If you know Carl, you know this by itself is a major accomplishment!

Nevertheless, these are two hours I need transcribed.

Carl’s story represents the modern era and what Scouting–and Scout camp–have been trying to accomplish for the last twenty years. It’s a story that is perhaps more complex than you might first think and it is part of the story I want to tell.

Please, help me reach my goal. Contribute to the Boxwell Interview Transcription Project: https://www.gofundme.com/boxwell-history-transcription-project to get this interview transcribed so I can produce a history of Camp Boxwell for its centennial in 2021.

Carl Adkins at the Health Lodge for our interview, November 2017.