Vice Chair of Investments and Programs and Partner Stephanie La Loggia invests significant time and talent each year with the Girl Scouts. She believes passionately that summer camp is one of the most fun and life-changing experiences a child can have. Every summer for over 20 years, she has traveled back to camp—the same one she attended as a kid—and helped to lead the camp’s programs. She continues to be involved with camp because kids say things like, “this is the best time I ever had in my whole life.”
Here’s what she shared about summer camp 2017:
This summer I packed up my backpack, hiking boots, and Swiss army knife and headed off to camp. Camp Whispering Pines is a Girl Scout camp located on Mt. Lemmon (one of the few mountains named after a woman, Sara Lemmon). I started out my career as a camp director, and I still go back each summer for a month or, if I can swing it, two.
Yes, it’s fun! We have dance parties, make noodle necklaces, play elbow tag, sing funny songs, laugh at campfire skits, and hike the trails. But it’s also hard work. From the moment the 7 a.m. wakeup bell rings until we sing “Taps” and everyone heads off to bed (about 10 p.m.), I’m gluing it, piecing it, cobbling it all together: meeting with staff, talking to leaders and parents, troubleshooting issues, planning for upcoming programs, working with the kids. By the time the sun sets and the stars come out (you can see so many of them up there!), I’m tired.
I sleep in a “bungalow” at camp, an open-air cabin that has curtains instead of windows. Every night I listen to the trees whisper and the whippoorwill chirp, and there’s always something good to reflect on from the day: like the girls being so proud to complete a five mile hike up to a mountain peak (“We hiked the whole way!” “We saw 35 ladybugs and 1 horney toad.”), so happy to shoot arrows at a real archery target (“I hit a bullseye!”), so willing to test their limits, try new things, and support each other (“we wrote a skit together!”). And I can’t say there are too many things better in my life than the moment of playing my guitar around a campfire, singing with the girls. Their voices blend in so perfectly with the swaying trees and the twinkling stars.
Here is a picture of me singing at campfire with the girls from a session entitled “Camp Broadway.”
