Last fall I went with my dad to the annual Camp Deerpark homecoming. It was his third trip to camp in a month—he had already attended a pastors’ retreat and a two-day meeting of the New York City Council of Mennonite Churches (NYCCMC) Executive Committee. We were approaching the chapel when he commented that the…

It all began in the summer of 1998 when my mother enrolled me into summer camp without my permission, or willing consent, if you will. “But mom,” I cried, “I told you I wanted to go to the Fresh Air Fund, not Christian camp; it’s going to be so boring!” And to that my mother…

I began my journey with Camp Deerpark as a camper at 9 years old. My church was Burnside Mennonite Church, now called King of Glory Tabernacle. Camp Deerpark was one of the church’s outreach programs of the late ’70s. I remember I didn’t particularly enjoy camp in my early days, but as a teen camper…

James was a 9-year-old foster child from Brooklyn. He came to Camp Deerpark with his little brother, although they were not in the same foster family. Someone had instructed James to watch out for his brother while they were at camp. James took that charge very seriously and became overly protective. In the process he…

John Smucker, originally from Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, had been pastoring a Mennonite church plant in New York City for about 10 years when he first heard talk about the possibility of the New York City Mennonite churches buying and operating their own camp. His other pastor friends, Paul Burkholder, Glenn Zeager and John Freed, were looking…

Camp Deerpark is nestled in the Shawangunk Mountains on the land that was once the home of the Lenape (len-AH-pay) or Lenni-Lenape Native American peoples. The Munsee, a subtribe of the Lenape, lived along the upper portion of the Delaware River. Shawangunk is a Dutch translation of the indigenous Munsee name “schawank,” meaning “that which…

The first time Ann Rader-Hayes and her husband, Edgar Hayes, visited Camp Deerpark was for a church retreat in the year 2000. They were living at Menno House in Manhattan and attended Manhattan Mennonite Fellowship. In 2004, Ann and Edgar, along with Ann’s brother and sister-in-law, Benand Elka Rader, and parents, Bill and Clara Rader,…