Chapter One: Camp Pasquaney
Tom was a nature counselor at Camp Pasquaney, the oldest continuously running boys camp in the United States. “Through his inventiveness, he took nature from a neglected activity with an out-of-the-way “museum” filled with mouldering taxidermy and pinned butterflies and turned it into an activity that every boy in camp participated in at least once in the summer, in close competition with sailing for favorite activity.”
As a boy, Tom was all about organizing the neighborhood kids for various games: football, 500, other random things. He would draw up award certificates and give them out (I still have my Polaris Award from a game of 500). Dungeons and Dragons with Tom as the Dungeon Master was an education in the hard side of life, as in game after game, my character would die very quickly. Tom took the job as Nature Counselor at Camp Pasquaney in New Hampshire, where he and I were both campers. My camper career overlapped his counselor career for two summers. He developed a devoted following as he found fun ways to engage the boys. Cloud-watching was my personal favorite, but there was also the nature trail, the nature project competition, various special expeditions to interesting places, and myriad nature-related achievement levels. Through his inventiveness, he took nature from a neglected activity with an out-of-the-way “museum” filled with mouldering taxidermy and pinned butterflies and turned it into an activity that every boy in camp participated in at least once in the summer, in close competition with sailing for favorite activity. More importantly, he inspired a life-long attachment to nature in so many of the boys that had the luck to be campers during his three years as a counselor.
Since then, so much of his efforts have been in support of education: his work for the Smithsonian, using Hypercard to add depth to videos back in the ’80s; his years at AOL producing endless features to help students and teachers, and generate a community around education; his work with the NEA; and the creation of Cicero.
—Adam de Boor, Staff Software Engineer, Google
Tom,
Happy belated birthday. When I think of Tom I remember horticulture and Camp Pasquaney. The only place I had a formal education to horticulture. It’s the last time the Orioles and Brewers were both relevant and even relevant at the same time. Good memories, Thanks!
George Fitz-Hugh
My best friend from Birmingham, AL, Barksdale Maynard, introduced me to Camp Pasquaney and to Tom during my first year as a camper. I really latched on to birdwatching that summer as Tom helped me pass my “Basic Ornithologist”, and was excited when I got back home to continue filling out my list of birds seen.
But Tom left an impression on me in a different activity. He was actually a pretty good tennis player. So on one of the rare occasions at camp when he was giving tennis instruction, I remember hitting with him and having trouble getting my serve in consistently. So he came over to my side of the net and said, “Look you’re a good baseball player, right? (that was my main camp activity) So the serving motion is exactly the same as throwing a baseball.” He demonstrated a couple times, I tried it and almost immediately was able to get the serve in, and with more power than ever before. Soon after, I was able to upset the 2 seed in the camp tennis tournament and sneak into the semi-finals. To this day, whenever I’m having trouble with my serve, I think of Tom and go back to that throwing motion to correct it.
…Oh and I still enjoy a little birdwatching every now and then.
Happy Birthday Tom!
I was lucky to be Tom’s counselor at Pasquaney, and then his colleague on the Council. It was a privilege both ways. I still chuckle to think of the summer when Tom was educating us on the problem of acid rain, and Gordon Adams cooked his sample with a little baking soda after one rain, turning it from acidic to basic. (I think I have the chemistry right.) What was really memorable is that when someone “innocently” asked Tom about the acid reading on the last rain, he never equivocated, despite the embarrassment and blow to his campaign he must have anticipated: he answered, puzzlement visible on his face, that in fact the last rain had not been acidic at all. It was a small but inspiring instance of Tom’s thorough-going honesty. Of course he also took the joke good-humoredly, too. I haven’t seen him in decades, probably, but Tom is a valued friend.