A unique summer camp

In 1952, I was 14 years old when my mother said a visitor was driving to see us from Columbia, South Carolina. Jim Perry, an Episcopal minister, was coming 55 miles to our home in Chester, SC. Rev. James Y. Perry Jr. was talking to me about spending the next summer at his camp in North Carolina, which he had founded a few years earlier.

I had previously gone to several camps in Western North Carolina, including the Boy Scout camp in Saluda, as well as Kanuga and Camp Pinnacle near Hendersonville. Jim announced that his Sky Valley Pioneer Camp was different and had a small enrollment of 40 campers, simplicity (no movies, TV, crafts, etc.), a religious emphasis, and a focus on hiking, camping out on the ground, wagon trips, and deep woods living.

In June, we arrived at Sky Valley between Brevard and Hendersonville, NC. This 2000-acre site was deep in the woods several miles from the highway. I still remember my cabinmates: Blake McNulty and Mac Lupold from Columbia, SC; David Latimore and Whitney Colbert from Chattanooga, TN; Robbie Walsh from Kingsport, TN; and Mark Doty, our “trailblazer” (junior counselor), from Winnsboro, SC. From the next cabin, I still remember James Rembert, Randy Dunlop, and Calhoun Kennedy from Columbia, SC; Wesley Weeks from Charleston, SC; and Robert Davidson from Davidson, NC (who was a cousin and later a student with me at Davidson College, whose father was a prominent professor at Davidson). Some of the counselors included Roland Weeks, Harry Applewhite, Juan? (who played the guitar frequently), Louie?, and other trailblazers: Winter Wright, Jimmy Applewhite, and Porter Warner. Several boys always seemed to come from Columbia, Charleston, Chattanooga, New Orleans, Kingsport, and Amiston, Alabama.

Jim Perry, our director, was with us all the time and performed his daily 3-minute homily at “quiet time” at sunrise by the edge of Lake Llewellyn (later named for his wife, who was our “dietician” at our “mess hall”). That was followed by our required morning skinny dipping, when we stripped naked and jumped in the ice-cold lake. Instead of a shower, we would swim out to a floating platform, soap up, swim back to the shore, and dry off with towels. All summer, we had no electricity, no plumbing, and no hot water in the cabins. We used latrines instead of toilets. The boys were allowed no radios, no candy, no soft drinks, and no snack bars. We had daily inspections in the cabins.

Our main activities included hiking and working on buildings around the campsite. In summer 1952 we built a new chapel near the lake. Some people might call this a “hiking camp.” The only honor each year was the hiking cup at the final banquet, which was given to the camper who had tallied the most miles. The amount was usually over 300 miles, an average of 5 miles a day for 8 weeks.

Jim Perry went on many of the long hikes with us; he also rode his horse and slept on the ground with the campers. After supper we would frequently walk 2 miles to the Sky Valley music camp (run by his parents for girls) and play softball (for boys only). Then we’d walk 2 miles in the dark back to the “council ring” for stories, songs, and prayers before taps.

Our hikes included several beautiful waterfalls near the camp (Figure 1). We also took some trips to Great Smoky Mountain Park, the Appalachian Trails, and Green River Cove. Jim was friendly to me and asked me to ride in the front seat with him in his big open truck. (When he drove to see us in Chester, he knew that my father had died when I was only 4 years old.)

Figure 1.

High Falls at DuPont State Forest, NC, near the campsite. By Ccalvin, CC BY-SA 3.0 license, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17124826.

James Rembert spent 11 summers at camp and seemed to know the most about Sky Valley and Jim Perry. He was awarded the “hiking cup” in 1953; I had won it in 1952. (That experience may have helped me run marathons 30 years later.)

James Rembert described Jim Perry: “He was different. He seemed to have a singular, uncomplicated, focused mission, which was to transform the campers’ talents, skills, minds, hearts, and mostly souls into young men of the woods and mountains, into beings who could not only forget city life but decry it in contrast to the rich fulfillment of tent and camp unity, regard for the staff, love of trees, birds, clouds, sunsets, streams, and ferns, but mostly complete fulfillment of trails, wading creeks, through dense brush in the mountains, the cool fragrant, abrupt challenging mountains.” “Enter the boy, leave a man!”was the motto of this camp. For a boy of 12 to 14 years, this saying made quite an impression.

Jim Perry was ordained into the Episcopal ministry in 1954. He ran Sky Valley and also worked for the diocese in the field of education and missions. On June 10, 1965, he was donning his vestments near the altar of the chapel (the one we helped build in 1952), collapsed on the ground, and died with an apparent heart attack at the age of 43. (I wasn’t able to find out why he died so young. His family history showed his father lived to age 86.) He was buried at a cemetery of Grace Episcopal in the Mountains in Waynesville, NC.

Jim’s son, “Bo” Perry, led the camp for several years until it ended in 1974. Later the camp was leased to the Eckerd Foundation, which provided support for children with troubled backgrounds.

Jim’s wife, Llewellyn La Bruce Perry, was originally from Charleston and died at age 95 in Asheville, NC, in 2010. A few years ago I visited the nearby DuPont State Forest from Brevard and found the site of the camp over 62 years ago when I was there and took a few photographs (Figure 2). The scenes seemed familiar: the forest was used to shoot scenes from the 1992 film The Last of the Mohicans.

Figure 2.

Recent photos of what had been the Sky Valley Pioneer Camp.