Bill Noun Was An Amazing Camp Counselor

Whenever a school year ends and summer approaches, I think about going to camp. For me, Camp Hollis has been the place I’ve spent so many summers; first as a camper, then as a counselor and, for over twenty years, as Hollis’ director. The camp on the shores of Lake Ontario in the town of Oswego gave me many opportunities to meet talented people who devoted their summers for the betterment of children. One of them was Bill Noun.

Bill was a Hollis counselor when I was a camper and when he died a few months ago, I was reminded of the profound effect he had on me. Though he was one of a dozen or so young adults who supervised us kids, Bill had a way of making an impression when you met him. Many people can attest to that, including those who worked alongside him when he taught at the Oswego High School. One of those teachers, Mike McCrobie, shared his memories of Bill in a column he writes for The Palladium-Times:

“Bill was certainly capable of teaching every level of math from Algebra to Calculus, but he most enjoyed the remedial math students. For much of his career, Bill was the champion of the underdogs—the kids who struggled not only with math, but often with life.”

Bill’s influence as a teacher went beyond helping young people understand a school subject. “If students didn’t have Bill for math,” Mike wrote, “they might remember him as the faculty emcee of the annual fall sports pep rally. Wearing his Buccaneer-blue blazer and white pants, he’d work the student body into a frenzy in the jam-packed gym doing the ‘class yell.’”

I imagine the teachers enjoyed Bill’s enthusiasm as much as the kids. Another educator who saw him in action is Sarah Gould Hill, who taught math alongside Noun. In fact, Sarah learned a lot about classroom work by being a student teacher under Bill’s guidance.

“That was in 1978,” Sarah said, “and it was a different time for teachers. Bill was good at comforting someone who was having a tough time. I watched him in the class, working with students, putting a hand on their shoulder and offering soothing words. His positive attitude really made a difference for those kids.”

In fact, as Sarah mentioned, there was a saying that circulated among the Oswego teachers and students that became a kind of inspirational quote: “Be kind. Be like Bill.” At the mass to remember Noun held in St. Mary’s Church, those in attendance were given a program of events. Included in it was this belief from Bill: “All students have to do is find and use that speck of greatness they have in themselves and run with it for the rest of their life.”

Even after he retired, Bill continued at the Oswego High School by running an Assisted Learning Center, where college students would mentor high school kids in different subjects. “He came in every day except a few weeks’ vacation he’d take in the winter to go south,” Sarah said. “In the end,” Mike noted, “Bill had more than fifty years in education all told.”

There’s one more memory that Mike and Sarah shared about Bill that really triggered my Camp Hollis memories of him. Bill played the ukulele and was heard during his years teaching, especially on the last day of school before a holiday vacation. Five minutes before dismissal, Bill would come on the school’s PA system to serenade students with a holiday-related song. What a way to start a vacation!

And what a way to make a Camp Hollis campfire special. That’s where Bill had his greatest impact on me. Campfires are an important part of an overnight camp. For many kids, it’s their first time away from home and as the sun sets and skies darken, it can be a hard time for those experiencing homesickness. Thankfully, there were counselors like Bill to make those campfires fun and exciting. But, because Bill was special, he also made them meaningful. Here’s how:

Bill shared popular folk songs during singalongs and if we didn’t know the songs’ words when we arrived at camp, we sure did before we left. Bill made it a point to single out lyrics that he thought had special meaning to Camp Hollis, like the song “Home on the Range.”

“The next song I’m gonna sing,” Bill would say, strumming his uke, “is one you already know, but its words are very important, so listen carefully. Home, home on the range,” he’d sing, “where the deer and the antelope play.” Pausing, Bill pointed to his ear. “Where seldom is heard a discouraging word…” To make sure we were listening, he repeated that line slowly. Fifty years later, I still believe what Bill Noun taught us: Camp Hollis was a place where you’d hear encouraging words.

Years after that memorable campfire, I got to hear Bill play and sing again. In 1992, Camp Hollis started offering a program called Senior Camping, a two-day camporee for the young-at-heart. Seniors by the dozens came to enjoy camp, and since they loved singing, I’d call Bill and ask him to come by and share a few songs. I never knew how he’d show up: he might be Elvis swiveling his hips or Don Ho in a Hawaiian shirt and lei. Once, he brought along his three siblings and they serenaded us as a barbershop quartet. He was always a crowd pleaser.

Bill only declined my invitation to visit camp once. I’d called him to see if he could play for the seniors and he told me his mother had just died. “We’re Greek,” Bill said, “and Greeks honor their loved ones who’ve passed with a year of mourning, so I won’t be doing my songs during that time.”

It was hard to imagine a year without Bill’s music and you’d think it would be even harder now, knowing I’ll never hear him sing again. Isn’t it interesting, though, that, even in silence, what I hear is Bill Noun’s encouraging words.

Fulton, New York: Home of the Curveball?

Okay, I admit it. I’m not much of a baseball fan. But I am a big fan of Fulton and I’m always eager to learn its history. So when Fulton Library staff person Jeremy Wardhaugh asked me if I’d heard that the first curveball ever pitched took place right in my hometown, I wanted to know more.

Jeremy sent me several newspaper articles quoting baseball archivists who believe Fulton has a place in the sport’s history. He also explained that I wouldn’t find much about Fulton being home of the curveball in modern media coverage, but, as he said, “it was all over the papers at the turn of the 20th century, around 25 years after it was said to have taken place.” With that, I started looking back to the 1860s, before Fulton had formed as a city, but was already thriving with social and recreational activities.

Several sources, including Syracuse’s Post-Standard, do indeed credit the creation of the curveball to William Arthur “Candy” Cummings. Born and raised in Brooklyn, in 1867, while playing for the Brooklyn Excelsiors, Cummings was “caught” throwing the first curveball. But I can imagine that a good curveball takes years to develop and that’s where the city of Fulton comes in.

For several years, Cummings attended Falley Seminary, a Fulton boarding school for boys and girls of high school age. In 1864, Cummings started working on his curveball at Voorhees Park, which was across the street from the Seminary. Voorhees has long been a recreational setting for young and old to enjoy the outdoors and play games, so it’s easy to picture young Cummings throwing one baseball after another, honing his pitch.

Where did Cummings get the idea for a fast-moving baseball that curved? Some say it didn’t happen on the ball field, but on the water. “One summer day in 1864,” a Worcester newspaper reported, “Cummings was playfully tossing clamshells over the ocean surf near his home in Brooklyn. To his astonishment, the shells took on a sharp curve and returned to almost where he stood. He began studying his delivery and the flights more closely, hoping to learn the cause of the peculiar turn….He was convinced he could toss a baseball the same way.”

Cummings probably never learned the science behind how he made objects curve in his Falley Seminary classes, but someone had figured it out 200 years earlier. Swiss mathematician Daniel Bernoulli’s theory of how objects move through the air explained it. When a pitcher puts a spin on the ball as it leaves his or her hand, the spin disturbs the air around it. Even something as insignificant as the stitches on a baseball can form a thin layer of air as it spins, causing air pressure on top of the ball to be greater than on the bottom. This makes the ball curve downward.

It was the snap of Cummings’ wrist that put such a mean spin on a baseball, and whenever he threw one, it was tough to connect with. Here’s how the Syracuse Journal described his unique pitch in 1942, over 75 years after batters first faced his curveball.

“[He was] a little bit of a fellow, and in his best pitching days did not weigh over 120 pounds, but he was as plucky and nervy a kid as they make, and the most graceful pitcher the game ever knew. When conditions were right, with the wind against his pitching, Cummings could make the ball talk” causing Doug Allison, his catcher, to say, “It’s all over; they can’t hit you with a car.”

Soon, Cummings’ creative pitching was winning plenty of games. He eventually started playing for the National Baseball Association, leading teams in Baltimore and Philadelphia. But while in Fulton, he brought a bit of fame to our city. For many years, a downtown clothing store displayed a silver ball, with its inscription noting a win on May 19, 1866, by the Falley Seminary team. Cummings was on the mound that day, where he claims to have pitched his first curveball in a regular game. Names of the players who won the trophy are also engraved on it and the Syracuse Journal noted that every one of the eight team players still alive swear that Cummings used a curveball in that game.

As proud as I am of Fulton’s history, it’s important to acknowledge that, much like today, there has always been controversy among baseball teams. Rivalry to claim the crown as creator of the curveball remains fierce. Others who compile baseball history give pitchers like Bobby Matthews and Terry Larkin credit for developing the curveball. Here’s how Connecticut’s New Haven Register made its case for a man named Fred Goldsmith:

Claims that Goldsmith was the originator of the curveball came from his grandson, John Castle. Castle remembered listening to his grandfather tell stories of being a top pitcher in the early days of professional baseball, winning many games for the Chicago White Sox. Castle said that Goldsmith’s winning ways was due to a curveball, which his grandfather discovered as a boy on the streets of New Haven. In his interview with the Register, Castle produced a yellowed newspaper clipping describing Goldsmith’s public curveball demonstration in Brooklyn in 1870, four years after Cummings was believed to have used it to win that trophy for Fulton.

Who decides what is truth and what’s merely speculation? When it comes to baseball, I’d say that responsibility goes to the Baseball Hall of Fame, which, in 1939, voted Candy Cummings into its esteemed membership. Still, a quick Google search will lead you to the ongoing dispute over who gets credit as the creator of the curveball, Cummings or Goldsmith.

Maybe the best place to leave this story is to imagine those two baseball players exhibiting some sportsmanship. I like to think of them shaking hands at the end of a game, sharing the pride of being co-partners in the creation of the greatest pitch known to baseball.

The Orphanages of Oswego, New York

Recently, I completed a book on the history of Camp Hollis, the children’s residential camp in the town of Oswego. In recent years, the children who attend Hollis come from all over Oswego County, but during its early history many were from the two orphanages in the city of Oswego. After learning that the camp once provided respite for children who’d found themselves without a family, I wanted to know more about those orphanages. Shortly before I retired from running the camp, I got my chance when Frank and Craig Fisher paid us a visit.

In 2009, brothers Frank and Craig had stopped at the camp while touring the city that had raised them. In their youth, they and their three siblings were residents of the Oswego Children’s Home. While living there, the Fisher boys spent a few summers as Camp Hollis campers and they stopped by to see the place they fondly remembered.

Frank eventually wrote a book about the Children’s Home, and from it I learned some of its history, including how Oswego originally addressed the needs of parentless children. Four years after the city was founded in 1848, Oswego acknowledged its growing problem of abandoned or homeless children by founding the Oswego Orphan Asylum. According to Frank’s book, “the Asylum was established by an association of ladies of Oswego and incorporated under general law on February 11, 1852…and that the socially prominent made it one of their primary charities.”

Operating out of a rental building on West Sixth Street, the city offered basics like food and shelter, and soon the number of youth being served by the Asylum grew. To accommodate more children, in 1856 it moved to a newly-constructed three-story building on 132 Ellen Street. Seventy-four children were in attendance; a year later, there were 100. Those numbers remained high for decades. (It took many years, but by 1942, the orphanage was given a new name to better reflect its mission: The Oswego Children’s Home.)

The need to care for abandoned children was so critical that a second orphanage opened in Oswego in the 1890s. The Sisters of St. Francis, of Syracuse, New York, had been caring for homeless children from the Oswego area in their convent, but Reverend Michael Barry, Pastor of St. Paul’s Church in Oswego, had long envisioned a home for children in the city where “the little ones could be kept closer to relatives and friends,” rather than being sent to Rochester or Syracuse orphanages. In 1896, the perfect home was found.

It was a three-story estate once owned by Judge Samuel Ludlow. Upon Ludlow’s death, the estate had degenerated into an unseemly “roadhouse” and Oswego residents were gravely concerned about the establishment’s condition. Officials wanted to return the estate to something of value for the community, which is just what happened when it became The Saint Francis Home for Children. Overlooking the Oswego River on the east side of the city, the Home’s mission was “to provide for the care, nurture, maintenance and education of orphaned, homeless and destitute children of all races and creeds.”

There are as many stories of what orphanage life was like as they are children who resided in one. Those stories deserve their own research and recording, but for the purposes of this essay I’ll focus on what the Oswego orphanages provided beyond food, shelter and education. Both Homes featured activities like glee clubs, orchestras and bands, woodshops, sewing rooms and other opportunities to learn life skills. Children attended Sunday church services; the Children’s Home visited different denominations each week, while St. Francis’ Home went to a local Catholic Church. For entertainment, the children marched in the city’s Memorial and Fourth of July parades and were guests for special movie showings and Christmas parties.

How were these orphanages able to manage financially? Budget reports from the city of Oswego’s early history show that its Department of Charity paid for the children’s care. In 1904, a newspaper noted the city allocated $1.50 a week per child to both Homes. Also supporting the orphanages were local service groups like Catholic Daughters and Veteran’s groups. A major financial supporter was the Community Chest, a national charitable organization founded to support a community’s needs. (It later became known as the United Way.) The Community Chest in Oswego, which also helped organizations like the Scouts, 4-H, the Salvation Army and Camp Hollis, annually helped the Oswego Children’s and the St. Francis Children’s Homes.

Today, it’s hard to imagine a time when children without family were raised in an institution. The change came in the 1930s and ‘40s, with a shift in philosophy regarding what was considered best for parentless children. Leading this change locally was Judge Eugene F. Sullivan, the Oswego County Children’s Court Judge who founded Camp Hollis. Sullivan saw many children in his court chamber who had somehow ended up in an orphanage. Along with providing those children with some recreation repose at Camp Hollis, Sullivan also believed that the entire community should take an interest in children who’d had a tough break. He once said, “A vigilant community needs a happy, contented and prepared generation of youngsters to assume their duties of citizenship. All the kids ask is a chance. Let’s see that they get it.”

By the early 1950s, State and Welfare authorities were promoting and encouraging the placement of children in foster homes rather than institutionalized settings. The number of children in the two Oswego orphanages decreased, and by September of 1952, the announcement came that St. Francis’ Home would be closing. The building would carry on its work by serving as the area’s Catholic high school, Bishop Cunningham. Today it is the site of St. Luke’s Nursing Home and the adult residences Bishop Commons and St. Francis Commons.

After celebrating 100 years of service in July of 1952, the Oswego Children’s Home closed its doors in 1956. Oswego State College rented and then purchased the building for use, creating the Hillcrest Dormitory for students. Today, it is the site of a 122-room nursing home facility.

The St. Francis Home for Children, one of two orphanages in the city of Oswego.