Almost a Century of Happy Campers
At Camp Kieve and Wavus Camp, leaders strike a balance between tradition and change
For those who know, there is simply nothing like summer camp in Maine.
Jumping into a cool lake on a hot summer day. Perfecting the J-stroke and other critical paddling skills. Hiking up pine-forested mountains. Giggling with friends at camp in-jokes and the skits performed during mealtimes or talent shows. Listening to evocative, eerie loon calls while drifting off to sleep at night in a bunkhouse.
Magic, pure magic.
But in a changing world, the beloved traditions of summer camp may not be as timeless as once they were. In some parts of the country, extreme heat, wildfire smoke, heavy rain, and flooding events have disrupted camp sessions, sometimes causing campers to stay indoors or even be sent home. There are other pressures, too. Children in the U.S. are experiencing increasing levels of depression and anxiety, and technology and social media connectivity are so ubiquitous it’s hard to imagine kids clamoring to go on a weeks-long digital detox while at summer camp.
At Camp Kieve and Wavus Camp on Damariscotta Lake in Lincoln County, Maine, two Colby alumni believe that finding innovative methods to balance tradition and change is the best strategy to make sure the camps thrive now and in the future. They are working to make camp more accessible to everyone, to protect the lakefront around them, and to give back to the community in a variety of important ways.
“I think traditions can help kids feel attached to something greater. There’s plenty of that. And there’s plenty of change,” said Sam Kennedy ’09, president and chief executive officer of the nonprofit Kieve Wavus Education. “We’re trying to be deliberate in how we change.”
A season of freedom and growth
From its inception nearly a century ago, Camp Kieve was meant to be a different kind of place. It was founded in 1926 by Philadelphia schoolteacher Don Kennedy, who dreamed of a summer camp that minimized competition and encouraged kids to set and surpass their own personal goals via wilderness trips and other challenges.
That’s what he created, and for many years, the all-boys camp was run as the Kennedy family business, according to Henry Kennedy ’80, executive director emeritus of Kieve Wavus Education. His grandfather was camp founder Don Kennedy, and his father was Dick Kennedy, another progressive educator who continued the tradition by running the camp from 1959 to 1990.
From a young age, Henry Kennedy became involved in the year-to-year and day-to-day operation of the camp. “On weekends, we’d mow the lawns and clean the cabins and get everything put to bed. All the things that need to happen,” he said.
He also attended Camp Kieve as a camper, recalling it as an extraordinary experience.
“My dad gave us a lot of freedom. We really loved being able to make our own choices. One of his mantras was that there is no penalty for failure. He really wanted us all to take healthy risks,” Henry Kennedy said. “This is a wilderness tripping camp, and you learn so many things about yourself when you strip away creature comforts and get out in the canoe for weeks at a time.”
When he was 14, he and other campers from Kieve went on a six-week paddling adventure in Canada, memorable for mornings so cold that sometimes the water in their cooking pots was frozen—and for the enduring friendships made there. The guys on the trip even held a 50th reunion a couple of summers ago.
“The friendships that we made were very real, and very nourishing, and we still stay in touch to this day,” Henry Kennedy said. “A lot of that is because we were given enough freedom and allowed to make a few mistakes, get a few scrapes and bruises. It’s just healthy.”
Challenges and change
The 1960s and 1970s brought a downturn in the national camping industry that was felt all the way on the shores of Damariscotta Lake. That was when the Kennedys turned the family business into a nonprofit foundation, Kieve Affective Education Inc., now Kieve Wavus Education. When Henry Kennedy went to Colby, his father asked him to take some business classes.
“I was an economics major sort of as a result of that,” Henry Kennedy remembered.
He became a certified public accountant and worked for a large accounting firm for about a decade before returning to Camp Kieve.
“Having that business background was important because even as a nonprofit, it’s got to be run properly,” Kennedy said. “We did a lot of heavy lifting, and now the business plan and the facilities make a lot of sense, and are sustainable.”
The camp instituted financial aid so that the experience would be more broadly available to all boys who were interested in being Kieve campers. Camp leaders also began developing new programs that would enable it to become a year-round educational institution.
One of those programs is the Leadership School, founded by Dick Kennedy in the early 1980s to empower youth and their adult teachers through experiential education. Today, the school serves more than 5,000 students and educators a year from Maryland to northern Maine.
In 2005, Henry Kennedy and the Kieve Affective Education nonprofit were able to realize a long-held dream of adding a summer camp for girls when they merged with The Wavus Foundation across the lake. The Wavus Camp for Girls opened in 2006, with the same wilderness-trip model as Kieve and the kind of freedom to allow kids to spread their wings and grow.
About 10 years ago, the organization began working with immigrant communities in Maine, inviting the children of new Mainers—immigrants and refugees who often fled from difficult situations in their home countries—to come to camp.
“To have an 8-year-old child that is a first-generation American to know in his heart he can do whatever the heck he wants to do, that is important,” Henry Kennedy said.
Preparing for the future
Sam Kennedy, Henry’s son, grew up at Kieve and loved it.
“I was really proud of my family’s involvement and history here,” he said.
But like lots of young Mainers, he longed to see what kind of life lay in the world beyond the Piscataqua River Bridge. After graduating from Colby with a degree in English, Sam Kennedy immediately moved to Chicago, where he worked for technology companies and then a venture capital firm. He loved Chicago, but around the time he turned 30, he began to ask himself what he really wanted to do with his life.
“As I got a little older, I started to appreciate where Kieve Wavus Education sits in the experiential education landscape, and I began to understand just how exceptional this place and this program is,” he said. “I can’t take credit for starting it, but I thought I’d be silly not to at least try and work here and be a part of it. I was drawn to its excellence, and to making a difference. We are a strength in our category of summer camps.”
There are challenges, including climate change. The Kennedys know of a camp in upstate New York that has experienced frequent waterfront shutdowns because of blooms of toxic blue-green algae.
“Terrifying. I worry about our lake,” Sam Kennedy said. “Environmental stewardship is part of our mission, and when you think of what could change camps like ours overnight, that’s it.”
In response, Kieve Wavus Education works to purchase and protect lakefront, putting easements on land instead of developing it. So far, nearly 10 miles of lakefront has been protected.
“We’ve been pretty proactive about that,” Henry Kennedy said. “It’s also dark at night, and it’s really nice to know that forever, we can stand on our dock and not see lights.”
Conquering fears and accomplishing goals
Another area of emphasis has been expanding access to the camps, which historically have primarily served middle- and upper-class families. It’s important to Kieve Wavus leaders to change that, and the financial aid provided to campers has helped. Right now, the camps generate about $8 million in revenue in the summertime and give $1 million in financial aid.
“We’ve been blessed in a position where we’ve met every single ask and every single level of need for the past several years, and we’ve not had to turn a single camper family away,” Sam Kennedy said.
Kieve Wavus Education is preparing to launch a capital campaign that will, among other things, make sure robust assistance continues.
“More than anything else, we want to grow more accessible,” Sam Kennedy said.
Perhaps that’s because they know firsthand how much can happen over the course of a summer. When the kids arrive at camp, they don’t seem to mind handing over their cell phones for the duration, the Kennedys said.
“Everybody here is paying attention to one thing, as opposed to looking at their phones and half paying attention. They get to be fully present and share the same experience, which doesn’t happen that much,” Henry Kennedy said.
And when the campers get ready to return home, they just look different in a way that transcends growing a little taller.
“They’ve got this look in their eyes like, ‘I just did something that hardly anybody else has tried, and I did it,’” he said. “They did it with the help of their friends, and from us. Oftentimes they’ve conquered their fears and accomplished something much greater than they ever dreamed that they could accomplish. It just gives you confidence to set and attain new goals. And that’s a great feeling.”
